Social Security faces steep cuts. These senators want to bet on stocks and $27 trillion in debt to save it—but ‘the gamble does not always pay off’
For years, revenue from payroll taxes has been insufficient to fund current benefits, and the trust fund covered the gap. But once it runs out, Social Security will only be able to distribute what comes in. A proposal by Senators Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., would maintain current benefits and continue avoiding any pain for recipients or taxpayers by instead relying on the stock market—along with a mountain of fresh debt.
- ▪For years, revenue from payroll taxes has been insufficient to fund current benefits, and the trust fund covered the gap.
- ▪But once it runs out, Social Security will only be able to distribute what comes in.
- ▪A proposal by Senators Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., would maintain current benefits and continue avoiding any pain for recipients or taxpayers by instead relying on the stock market—along with a mountain of fresh debt.
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| Original publisher | Fortune |
| Canonical URL | https://fortune.com/2026/06/14/social-security-benefit-cuts-trust-fund-insolvency-stock-returns-us-debt/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:27:24 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-14T22:13:02.798Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-14T22:13:02.798Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 1rrziVbNHYr5 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Lawmakers have long known that Social Security faces a day of reckoning but have dodged any reforms that would cut benefits, hike taxes, or do both.Recommended Video The dilemma gained more urgency when new projections this month showed that the Social Security trust fund will run out of money sooner than previously thought, meaning benefits would face a 22% cut by 2032 unless adjustments are enacted. For years, revenue from payroll taxes has been insufficient to fund current benefits, and the trust fund covered the gap. But once it runs out, Social Security will only be able to distribute what comes in.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Fortune.
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