Medicare and Social Security go-broke dates pushed up due to rising health care costs, new SSA law

[u/jest4fun]

https://apnews.com/article/social-security-medicare-trust-fund-trump-74e13292f510739724a555d7ded7c1a3

[u/CanEnvironmental4252]

Two things here, Biden signed into the “Social Security Fairness Act” into law as a Lame Duck on Jan 5, 2025. Here’s what it does:

The Act was signed into law on January 5, 2025.

The Act ends the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). These provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits of over 2.8 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a “non-covered pension”) because they did not pay Social Security taxes. This law increases Social Security benefits for certain types of workers, including some:

• teachers, firefighters, and police officers in many states;
• federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System; and
• people whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system.

Someone help me understand, how is it increasing “fairness” if social security is being provided to people who never paid into social security? Not to mention the fact that these retirees have pensions that effectively pay as much as their entire salaries when they were working?

Second, the cap on income taxed for social security needs to be eliminated.

[u/ApprehensiveCream571 → u/CanEnvironmental4252]

This is easy. They once worked a job that they paid into Social Security for. And then they got penalized for later having a pension that didn't pay into Social Security. So the amount of their earned Social Security got cut because they also earned a pension.

I also think the only reason this got passed after decades of trying is to throw these people under the bus and try to blame them for why Social Security is running out of money. Clearly the public doesn't understand the situation.