A budget watchdog group warned Monday that former President Donald Trump 's tax proposals could worsen Social Security 's finances, opening up a new campaign issue in the waning days of the 2024 election.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington group that advocates smaller deficits, released an analysis that found Trump's calls for adding tariffs, deporting illegal immigrants, and ending taxes on Social Security benefits, tips, and overtime could increase Social Security's 10-year cash shortfall by $2.3 trillion.
The agenda could also make the public pension program insolvent three years earlier than expected — down from nine years to six years.
Under current law, revenues collected from taxes on Social Security benefits flow to the Social Security trust fund, as do payroll taxes collected on tips and overtime. Ending those taxes would lower the trust fund.
"Upon insolvency, the law calls for limiting Social Security spending to its revenue stream," the analysis reads, "which we've previously estimated would mean a $16,500 cut in annual benefits for a typical dual-income couple retiring in 2033."
The analysis gives Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris only slightly better marks, saying that "neither candidate has presented plans to fix Social Security's finances," but her campaign and the Democratic National Committee were quick to highlight CRFB's findings.
"Donald Trump’s agenda poses an imminent threat to Social Security, and seniors could have their benefits cut by a third," Harris spokesman Joseph Costello said. "This is yet another reason that Americans simply cannot afford the risk of another Trump term, where he would pursue unchecked power to use his Project 2025 agenda to hurt the American people."
CRFB has not released a detailed breakdown on Harris's policies, but the organization said it would not have a large impact on the Social Security trust fund's current trajectory.
Trump has promised repeatedly to protect Social Security and says his proposal not to tax Social Security benefits will help seniors. His campaign pushed back on the projections.
"The so-called experts at CRFB have been consistently wrong throughout the years," Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. "President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security in his first term, and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security in his second term."
Leavitt said Trump will slash regulations, create new energy sector jobs, and adopt pro-growth trade policies to grow the economy and boost Social Security's reserves. Trump has also said he can cut waste in the government in order to free up additional tax revenue.
"The only candidate who poses a threat to the solvency of Social Security is dangerously liberal Kamala Harris — whose mass invasion of millions of illegal aliens will, if they are allowed to stay, cause Social Security to buckle and collapse," Leavitt said.
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The CRFB analysis did include limited dynamic scoring, meaning it factors lost revenue via tax cuts that could be recouped later through economic growth, which would lead to higher earnings and thus new tax revenues. It issued a range of different scenarios weighing those factors, with Social Security losses varying from a revenue loss of $1.3 trillion at the low end to $2.8 trillion on the high end.
Other budget groups have concluded that Trump's plans to exempt certain forms of income from taxation would have only a limited effect on overall economic growth. The Tax Foundation, for example, found that exempting Social Security from income tax would boost long-run economic output by just 0.1% and would "create a new hole in the income tax without a sound policy rationale." The Tax Foundation, which generally favors lower tax rates, also found that Trump's plans to exempt overtime and tips from taxation would only slightly boost economic growth.
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