Social Security’s Financial Outlook: The 2015 Update in Perspective

The timing of the release of the Social Security Trustees Report is becoming more unpredictable. It used to come out in the spring, but in the last two years it has been released in late July. It is hard to know whether the delay reflects internal controversy or simply the inability to get six people (the Social Security Commissioner, the Secretaries of Treasury, of Health and Human Services, and of Labor, and two public trustees) in a room at the same time to sign the document. One logical reason for the delay this year is the time required to incorporate the important Medicare legislation passed in April and the desire to release the Social Security and Medicare reports at the same time. While the release date has become more unpre­dictable, the message has not. The program faces a 75-year deficit, the Old-Age, Survivors and Dis­ability Insurance (OASDI) program trust funds are scheduled for exhaustion in the early 2030s, and the Disability Insurance trust fund will run out of money next year. The specifics for 2015 show a little improvement: the 75-year deficit declined from 2.88 percent in 2014 to 2.68 percent in 2015 and the date of trust fund exhaustion moved from 2033 to 2034. But the story remains unchanged: the trust funds are going to run out of money, forcing substantial benefit cuts. Congress needs to act both to restore confi­dence in the nation’s major social insurance program and to give people time to adjust to needed changes. This brief updates the numbers and puts the current report in perspective. It also discusses the projected exhaustion of the Disability Insurance Trust Fund in 2016 and replacement rate data that remain missing from the Trustees Report.