Maya MacGuineas: Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable. Kansas, Missouri need action

Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She recently wrote an opinion piece for the Kansas City Star, an excerpt of which is below.

More than 70 million Americans rely on Social Security and Medicare benefits in retirement. However, many are probably unaware that both programs’ trust funds are headed to zero — at which point, the law states that big cuts will happen automatically. Yet very few of our political leaders are saying much about this massive issue. 

Every year, the trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare release reports to Congress about the state of these programs. This year’s report reiterated what we’ve long known: Absent congressional action, Social Security’s retirement trust fund is projected to be insolvent in 2032, just six years from now, at which point 528,000 Kansans and more than 1.1 million Missourians would face automatic across-the-board benefit cuts of 22%. Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund is projected to be insolvent just half a year later in 2033, triggering an 11% cut to Medicare hospital payments and affecting more than 600,000 Kansans and 1.4 million Missourians.

Read the entire piece here. 

Published works by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget do not necessarily reflect the views of all members or staff of the Committee.