The Remarkable News Inside the Social Security Trustees Report

At first blush, the 2019 Social Security Trustees Report contains little news. Most of the projections are little changed from a year ago. The retirement and survivors trust fund is projected to run dry in 2034, the same as last year. But someone focusing only on these headline numbers would miss some remarkable news—that a crisis in the Disability Insurance (DI) program has largely disappeared. In 2015 the DI trust fund was expected to run out of money in just over one year. If that happened 11 million DI beneficiaries would have faced an abrupt benefit cut of nearly 20 percent. The 2019 projection indicates that the DI program can pay all scheduled benefits for the next 33 years—without any tax increase.