Ex-Social Security administrator calls for raising cap

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Hill

06/16/26 10:00 AM ET


Former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley argued that requiring higher-income Americans to pay more into Social Security is the solution to the program’s looming funding shortfall after a new report warned that beneficiaries could see a 22 percent cut in their monthly checks by the end of 2032.

In an interview that aired Monday on NewsNation’s “The Hill,” O’Malley said lawmakers should raise the cap on earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes rather than pursue benefit reductions.

“It’s only 6 percent of us that experience any benefit from the cap and an even smaller percentage — three or four — who benefit from scrapping the cap on income above $250,000,” he told host Blake Burman. “Most Americans, Blake, think it is unfair that wealthy people don’t pay the same tax rate as a custodian in a school or a teacher.”

The former Biden administration official pointed to the program’s current payroll tax cap, which exempts annual earnings above $184,500 from Social Security taxes. His comments come as lawmakers grapple with a new Social Security trustees’ report projecting that the program’s trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032 — one quarter earlier than projected last year. At that point, incoming payroll revenue would cover only 78 percent of scheduled retirement benefits.

Read more: https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/5926016-omalley-social-security-fix/

[yellow dahlia]

1. Martin O'Malley knows of what he speaks.

[Callie1979]

2. Eliminate the cap. Inflation adjusted means testing too.

that would keep it solvent for decades longer

[multigraincracker]

3. Don't raise the cap. Remove it.

[Buddyzbuddy]

4. Easy fix, for Democrats in '28.

Take/keep Congress and the Presidency, get modify or remove the fillibuster rule and start fixing.

[FakeNoose]

5. Of course, it's the obvious solution and everyone knows it

So what's the problem?

[Ray Bruns]

7. "So what's the problem?"

Republicans and rich people.

[electric_blue68]

6. Probably good to get rid of it. In leiu of that definitely raise the cap much higher

[not fooled]

8. Alex Lawson accurately described the root of the problem

which is ever-increasing income disparity. So much income that previously would have been more equitably distributed across all tax brackets and hence subject to Social Security taxation instead has gone to the very wealthy, hence escaping such taxation and depriving Social Security of projected income.