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AARP Opposes Bills to ‘Short-Circuit’ Debate on Social Security Shortfall
‘PROMISE Act’ would delegate the work of drafting legislation on shoring up the system’s finances to an unelected board and limit scrutiny of potential cuts
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Key takeaways
- AARP opposes several bills in Congress that would give unelected boards or commissions the job of drafting legislation to shore up Social Security’s finances.
- One new proposal in the Senate would fast-track a Social Security solvency plan with limited debate.
- AARP says such major changes to Social Security should be fully debated and is urging Congress to oppose any cuts to benefits.
AARP has come out strongly against a plan on Capitol Hill to address Social Security’s long-term fiscal health by tasking an unelected board to rapidly debate and draft legislation to shore up the program’s finances.
Legislation introduced July 14 by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and six other lawmakers would charge an existing panel, called the Social Security Advisory Board, (SSAB) with writing legislation to ensure the program’s two trust funds — currently projected to exhaust their surplus by 2034 — are solvent for the next 50 years.
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The SSAB’s proposal would then go to Congress and be considered under an expedited process that AARP says would limit debate and amendments and create a glide path for lawmakers to cut Social Security payments.
“We agree with you that Congress needs to act to address Social Security’s financial challenges and to strengthen Social Security for generations to come,” wrote Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer, in a July 21 letter to Durbin and Cassidy. “But how Congress acts matters.”
She added, "Strengthening Social Security should happen through regular order, in full public view, with openness and transparency — rather than through a process that limits the type of amendments and sets arbitrary procedural deadlines to short-circuit the debate.”
The bipartisan board, created by Congress in 1994, can have up to seven members appointed by Congress and the White House (currently, there are four, all congressional appointees). Its stated functions include making recommendations to the president and Congress on a number of Social Security issues, including the system’s solvency, but not writing legislation.
“This advisory board has never done anything like this,” says Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president for Government Affairs.
Bill could bypass committee votes
The bill, titled the Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone (PROMISE) Act, calls for the advisory board’s proposal to be introduced in Congress by Sept. 17 or the first day after that in which the House and Senate are in session.
Lawmakers could then hold hearings and amend the SSAB plan but would not need to vote to advance the measure out of key congressional committees, as is typical with federal legislation. If they do not vote, or “report,” the bill by Nov. 9, it would move straight to the House and Senate floors — during a postelection “lame-duck session” of Congress, “when departing members are completely unaccountable to voters,” LeaMond wrote.
The PROMISE Act also contains language that limits opportunities for lawmakers to offer amendments and limits the types of amendments allowed. Consideration of the bill, including debate and voting on any amendments, would be capped at 100 hours.
In a statement, Durbin and other sponsors said their proposal would jump-start the debate over Social Security’s future and force lawmakers to address the issue with a sense of urgency.
“Here is our chance to agree on a bipartisan process to rescue Social Security this year,” said Durbin. “Our bipartisan proposal opens Congress to debate this issue in a transparent, fair and bipartisan way.”
But Sweeney says the process outlined in the bill would make it too easy to possibly cut Social Security, especially for future retirees.
“If every other bill in Congress goes through regular order, why would something as important as Social Security get a special process that cuts off debate, that limits the kind of amendments, that limits the kind of things you can talk about?” he says. “To us, that just doesn’t make sense.”
One area of agreement: Congress needs to act soon
There’s no question that Social Security’s finances need attention. The surplus in the program’s two trust funds will be depleted in 2034 unless Congress acts to buttress the system, according to the 2026 annual report from Social Security’s Board of Trustees, which oversees the funds.
Social Security payments, which currently go to more than 71 million people, are primarily funded by payroll taxes levied on most U.S. workers and their employers. Absent congressional action to avert the trust funds’ shortfall — by increasing revenue, reducing outlays for benefit payments or a combination of both — the money flowing into Social Security will cover only about 83 percent of scheduled payments.
AARP is calling on Congress to address the looming shortfall without any cuts to benefits.
“Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire,” Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, AARP’s CEO, said in a June 9 statement marking the report’s release. “No family should see any cuts to what they’ve earned in Social Security.”
Sweeney says that while Congress needs to address Social Security’s finances with a sense of urgency, there is no reason for lawmakers to farm out that work to another body.
“Our members and the public expect that Congress is going to do its job and deal with these hard issues, which we elected them and we’re paying them to deal with, not to outsource it to some other committee, some unelected group of people,” he says. “The time they’re spending creating special rules is time they could be spending fixing Social Security.”
More commissions proposed
AARP also opposes two other bills that would create commissions to address Social Security’s long-term solvency.
One House bill, sponsored by Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), would charge a 13-member commission with providing recommendations and legislation to Congress on how to shore up Social Security’s finances. At least nine members of the commission would have to support the plan for it to move forward, which its sponsors say would guarantee bipartisan consensus.
Under that bill, lawmakers would then introduce the commission’s bill, and it would be subject to an expedited, up-or-down vote. Individual members of Congress would not be able to offer amendments.
Another proposal, introduced in the House and Senate, would create a fiscal commission to reduce the national debt and annual deficits and shore up trust funds dedicated not just for Social Security but also for Medicare and the nation’s highways.
With its dedicated revenue from payroll taxes, “Social Security is a self-financed system that does not contribute a penny to the national debt, and Congress should not put it in the crosshairs of unrelated budget debates,” LeaMond wrote in separate July 21 letters to the House and Senate sponsors of the fiscal commission bill. “Instead, any changes to Social Security should focus on the financial and retirement security of the American people.”
AARP research shows that large majorities of older Americans across the political spectrum “strongly oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the debt,” she added.
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