Maya MacGuineas: Social Security is Broken. Benefits Cuts for the Rich Are the Fix.

Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She recently wrote an opinion piece for Barron's, an excerpt of which is below.

When he signed the Social Security Act in 1935, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said the program was to provide “at least some measure of protection to the average citizen and his family…against poverty-ridden old age.” The first monthly Social Security payment was for $22.54, or roughly $400 in 2025 dollars.

Today, Social Security goes well beyond its original goal of providing a basic level of protection, paying out an average of more than $2,000 a month to Americans across the income spectrum. The highest-income couples, in which both spouses earned above Social Security’s taxable maximum—$184,500 in 2026—for at least 35 years, can now collect $100,000 in annual benefits.

The U.S. government spends $1.6 trillion a year on Social Security—well more than it collects in revenue—and those costs are rising. According to its trustees, Social Security’s trust fund will be insolvent in less than seven years. In service of saving the program, it is time to put limits on how much wealthy seniors can collect.

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.