AARP Hearing Center
Rob Dobi
More than 90 years ago, on Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law a groundbreaking initiative that would become one of the most effective economic security programs in American history: Social Security.
Since AARP’s inception in 1958, we have been a fierce advocate for Social Security, from the 1972 passage of automatic annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to the more recent fight to preserve essential customer services.
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This year, securing Social Security’s financial future is at the forefront of AARP’s policy agenda. The program’s combined trust funds — one for retirement and survivor benefits, the other for disability benefits — are projected to run short by 2034. We are pressing Congress to enact solutions that don’t reduce payments or put the program on a risky path toward privatization.
That starts with highlighting Social Security’s importance to the more than 71 million people receiving monthly payments and to the millions more paying into the system.
“Social Security is one of the most successful and popular initiatives in history,” said AARP CEO Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan in a June 2026 statement. “Congress needs to act to protect and strengthen it now and in the future.”
Our work includes regular outreach and engagement with Social Security Administration (SSA) leadership and members of Congress, deep research and analysis of Social Security policies and procedures, a slate of public education events and mobilizing millions of older Americans in support of protecting and strengthening Social Security.
While AARP’s fight for Social Security is diverse and multifaceted, the core message is very simple, says Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president for government affairs.
“Social Security is money we’ve earned, we’ve paid for, throughout our working lives,” Sweeney says. AARP’s job now, he adds, is to “make sure Congress understands what is at stake.”
Here’s a look at how AARP is fighting to protect Social Security right now.
1. Pushing Congress to strengthen Social Security’s financing without benefit cuts
For 90-plus years, Social Security has never missed a payment, but Americans are worried about the program’s financial health. A July 2025 AARP poll of U.S. adults found that only 36 percent are very or somewhat confident about Social Security’s future.
Even if the trust funds run dry, Social Security will continue making monthly payments — it is primarily funded by ongoing payroll tax collections — but at a reduced rate. Retirees would get 83 cents on the dollar of the full payment calculated from their lifetime earnings record, according to the Social Security Board of Trustees’ 2026 annual report— unless Congress acts to shore up the program by increasing its revenue, reducing its outlays or a combination of the two.
“Our message is straightforward: Do not cut the Social Security that people have earned,” Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer, told lawmakers at an Aug. 5 Senate committee hearing on Social Security.
Benefit reductions would be “devastating” to older Americans, she said, noting that Social Security is becoming more central than ever to Americans’ retirement security.
“Private pensions have mostly vanished, and around half of our workforce has no employer-sponsored retirement plan,” LeaMond told lawmakers. “Forty-two percent of Americans age 50 plus who are not yet retired have less than $50,000 in retirement savings. All of this means Social Security will remain essential for many years to come.”
In written testimony, LeaMond noted that Congress has “hundreds of tools in its toolbox to guarantee unreduced payments for today’s seniors and future generations, and many of those options enjoy strong bipartisan public support.”
2. Opposing a special commission or fast-track process to address Social Security solvency
AARP is fighting proposals to delegate the debate over Social Security’s future to an unelected commission or board.
Three bills pending in Congress would charge outside groups with the task of drafting legislation to shore up Social Security’s finances — and would then speed the resulting proposal through Congress, with limited debate and amendments.
“They want to cut Social Security behind closed doors, without public comment or debate, and to do it so fast, the public can’t mobilize and respond,” Sweeney says.
The last time the trust funds neared depletion, in the early 1980s, Congress created the National Commission on Social Security Reform (informally known as the Greenspan Commission, after its chair, the late economist Alan Greenspan) to make recommendations on securing the program’s finances.
In its deliberations, conducted in private, the commission “essentially deadlocked” over how to fully address the funding shortfall, according to an account from Robert Ball, a member of the panel and a former head of the SSA. It took traditional negotiations between congressional party leaders to hammer out the 1983 legislation that kept Social Security solvent for decades.
“The history of special commissions is littered with very good intentions and failed results,” LeaMond testified at the Aug. 5 Senate hearing.
Lawmakers need to debate the future of Social Security “through regular order, in full view of the American people,” she said. “Social Security is far too important to be rushed, outsourced or decided behind closed doors.”
3. Protecting the COLA
As the debate over Social Security’s funding heats up, some in Washington have proposed trimming the program’s annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) as a partial solution to address the shortfall.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonprofit group focused on reducing the federal debt and deficit, has floated ideas for limiting COLAs, such as instituting a flat rate or capped COLA that would increase payments by a uniform dollar amount for all beneficiaries. That amount would be calculated by applying the inflation rate to lower benefit levels, meaning that for most recipients, benefits would not keep up with rising prices.
“That might sound like an interesting idea, but it’s a massive cut to Social Security dressed up in technical jargon,” Sweeney wrote in a July LinkedIn post outlining AARP’s opposition to the flat-rate idea.
Indeed, a new research paper from the AARP Public Policy Institute found that under the CRFB proposal, 80 percent of beneficiaries would see the purchasing power of their benefits erode year after year, compounding as people age.
“Because the impact of COLA cuts multiplies over time, a flat-rate COLA would intensify financial hardship for many people in their 80s and 90s and for people who develop disabilities at relatively young ages,” the paper states.
AARP pushed lawmakers to make COLAs automatic in 1972 (previously, any increases were subject to a congressional vote) and has aggressively fought efforts to scale back those annual inflation adjustments ever since.
AARP surveys show that many retirees already feel like the current COLA isn’t enough to help them keep up with rising costs. “That’s why AARP opposes proposals that reduce the value of Social Security over time, however they’re dressed up or whatever clever name they’re given,” Sweeney wrote in his post.
4. Demanding better customer service from Social Security
The SSA has struggled for years to address significant challenges with customer service, including lengthy waits to get help by phone or secure appointments at local Social Security offices and extended delays in processing disability applications. In recent years, AARP has amplified its demands that the agency better serve those who rely on it.
For years, AARP has supported increasing the SSA’s customer service budget to support better service to older Americans. This year, the SSA received a modest increase of $50 million for fiscal year 2026, which runs through Sept. 30. The measure, which became law in February, included other conditions related to customer service, such as calling on the SSA to avoid closing field offices or reducing other direct-service operations and to give monthly reports to Congress on customers’ wait times for office appointments.
For fiscal year 2027, AARP is again calling on Congress to allocate robust funding for customer service, noting that Americans continue to face lengthy wait times for in-person and phone services.
“Put simply, Americans are unhappy with customer service at SSA,” AARP wrote in a May 29 letter to the House and Senate appropriations committees, citing telephone hold times that “stretch into hours” and waits for in-person appointments “that can stretch into two months.”
“Americans who have paid into Social Security their entire lives expect and deserve better,” we said.
AARP has also called on the SSA to ensure that Americans’ private data is protected following the disclosure earlier this year that a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee assigned to the agency had signed an agreement last year to share sensitive Social Security data with an outside political advocacy group. (The SSA says it has not seen evidence that SSA data was shared with the group.)
“SSA is entrusted with the sensitive data of hundreds of millions of Americans, and protecting that data from illegal use must be a top priority,” LeaMond said after the SSA disclosed the incident in a January court filing. “Anyone involved must be held accountable, and the Social Security Administration must take immediate steps to ensure nothing like this can happen again.”
5. Mobilizing voters to put Social Security front and center in the 2026 election
AARP launched a new voter-engagement campaign earlier this year, asking our members to make Social Security a defining issue in 2026.
The “I Am a Social Security Voter” campaign encourages older voters to ask candidates how they would address the program’s funding shortfall, and to pledge to only support candidates who promise to protect and strengthen Social Security.
“What we’re doing is trying to bring to bear the membership of AARP and the 50-plus [population] into the election equation so that Social Security is one of those issues that’s talked about a lot this fall,” explains John Hishta, AARP’s senior vice president for campaigns.
Hishta notes that the Social Security trust fund for retirement and survivor benefits is projected to run short by 2032 (the 2034 estimate is for both that fund and the disability trust fund combined), a date that falls within the six-year term of U.S. senators elected this November.
Contrary to most election cycles, when “candidates only pay lip service to Social Security,” those running this year will be “directly involved” in crafting solutions to protect the program, Hishta says. AARP is working to make sure candidates get specific about “how they’re going to ultimately solve Social Security, for not just this generation but future generations,” he says.
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