If Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is not stopped, the president’s promise not to cut Social Security will be thrown into the trash heap, and recipients will soon end up with a 23% cut in benefits.
The government is now saying the Social Security Trust fund will run out faster than ever, meaning that when people who are now 59 reach 65, the fund will be dry, and that sooner than that, benefits might have to be cut by as much as 23 percent for millions now receiving Social Security checks.
The fund always had plenty of money in it because there were always plenty of young people to pay into Social Security to take care of the older population. With the country getting older, money must come from sources other than payroll taxes to keep the fund going, but the Trump bill gives billions of dollars that could be used to save Social Security over to tax breaks for billionaires. Also, the expulsion of immigrants hurts Social Security because they pay into the fund with their paycheck deductions, and many of them do not collect any of those benefits, which go only to U.S. citizens.
Sounding the alarm
The labor-backed Alliance for Retired Americans, unions across the board including the AFL-CIO and AFGE and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities are sounding the alarm over the threat to Social Security coming as a result of the president’s breaking of his promise that he would never cut those benefits paid into over a lifetime by hard working Americans.
Retired Americans Executive Director Richard Fiesta said the system’s annual trustees report, issued June 18, shows full benefits can only be paid until 2033. In reality, the time could be much shorter because Fiesta’s calculations do not include the disastrous effects of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” In any case, once the fund is exhausted, the only revenue coming in will be from payroll taxes.
“If Congress does not make any changes, the Social Security Trust Fund will then pay 77% of benefits to all current and future beneficiaries,” Fiesta warned.
Congress’s ruling Republicans “are eager to cut the benefits Americans worked a lifetime to earn. Whether it’s raising the retirement age beyond 67, privatizing Social Security, or continuing the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) agenda of dismantling the Social Security Administration to make it harder to claim benefits, the future of guaranteed benefits is at risk.”
Max Richtman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare adds another threat to Social Security’s finances: The payroll tax cap is now $171,100 on wages and salaries only. Some 94% of taxpayers fall under the cap.
The other 6%—think your average corporate CEO—earn a lot more, but the amount above the cap is untaxed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., has campaigned for years, unsuccessfully, to “Scrap the cap!”
The “big beautiful bill” is silent on scrapping the cap. Instead, the House version wants to remove payroll taxes from tips and overtime pay, thus also cutting Social Security’s income flow.
The battle to save Social Security is only one part of the massive effort by labor and its allies to defeat the Trump bill. Name a section, and they find a harm to workers, families, and everyone else, except billionaires, in the “reconciliation” measure the president pushed and which is pending before the U.S. Senate. Lawmakers hoped to pass it by July 4, but that deadline is slipping, giving workers more time to oppose it.
The money bill can be beaten, AFT President Randi Weingarten told a recent joint conference of public sector union leaders. “I’m sorry that it’s come down to us, but it has. It always comes down to the labor movement. When unions get together, almost nothing can beat us. When we do it together, we will win,” she declared.
The key feature of the measure is to shower a 10-year $4.5 trillion tax break bonanza on the super-rich while actually increasing taxes on everyone else except for the top 5%. It’s partially paid for by a large cut in healthcare availability to the people.
See related story here: Medicaid cuts in the Big Ugly Bill threaten insured workers too
The bill needs only 51 senatorial “yes” votes to pass, which means foes need “no” votes from four of the chamber’s 53 Republicans, assuming all 45 Democrats and both independents oppose it. The Trump-GOP bill also would make permanent the corporate tax giveaways of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law. The House version passed by one vote, all on party lines, right before Memorial Day.
Not the only harm done
The bill would also do permanent harm to the broad array of services performed by federal workers.
Trump has already tried to cancel every union contract, covering a million federal workers, total. U.S. district judges in Boston and San Francisco either put his plans on hold or stopped them altogether, for now.
“This is a retaliation bill–retaliation against AFGE and other unions for successfully standing up for our members and fighting this administration’s illegal attempts to obliterate our federal agencies and the patriotic civil servants who run our federal programs,” says the American Federation of Government Employees in a statement.
Trump’s money bill would force remaining federal workers—after Trump and his alleged “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) axed almost 200,000—to pay 9.4% of their checks into retirement funds. If workers want to retain collective bargaining rights, there’s an extra 5% charge.
“Email and call (817) 904-8856 now and tell your senator to vote no!” AFGE urged.
The bill “gives the president sweeping authority for 10 years to reorganize or eliminate agencies, with $100 million to the Office of Management and Budget to implement these closures and no clear congressional oversight,” an AFGE fact sheet says.
Trump’s money bill repeals virtually all of the “green” construction projects of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Biden and organized labor strongly pushed. That includes rehabbing old buildings to cut energy consumption, traditional construction, building “green” factories, and improving subways, bus lines, airports, commuter rail and more.
“This legislation would eliminate good, blue-collar jobs to pay for trillions in tax breaks for the wealthy,” said Laborers President Brent Booker. “It could jeopardize as many as 1.75 million construction jobs—equal to more than three billion hours of work.
David Dayen reported in The American Prospect that the Senate’s reconciliation bill includes another big tax break for Big Oil, courtesy of Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. His provision “shields domestic onshore oil and gas drillers from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, a benefit that will largely be taken by companies based in Oklahoma.”
VoteVets reports Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, “just tacked on a plan to sell off 250 million acres of public lands…in three-million-acre portions every 60 days.”
The group says buyers would be “oil, gas, mining and logging interests” who want to “make a quick buck” or “build mansions on” those public lands. Even homelands for Native Americans “would be up for sale, with no right of first refusal.”
“This is a big beautiful betrayal” of the public trust, VoteVets concludes.
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