Proposal to raise Social Security age under fire

Raising the retirement age is just another way of saying, “Cut Social Security,” said the executive director of a Social Security advocacy organization in the wake of a congressman’s recent suggestion that full retirement age should be pushed back.

“It's a 7% benefit cut for every year the age goes up, even if you work to age 70 or beyond. That's thousands of dollars out of the pockets of people who live paycheck to paycheck and rely on their earned benefits to pay for food, medicine, and their heating bills,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, told InsuranceNewsNet.

Last week, Congressman Mark Alford, R-Mo., proposed raising the retirement age to help cut federal government costs. The congressman told Fox News that Republican members of Congress recently sat down with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency under President-elect Donald Trump to explore ways “to cut out budget.”

"I think there's a way, when people are living longer, they're retiring later, then on the front end, we can move that retirement age back a little bit," Alford said.

The current full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later, and is the earliest age at which workers can begin getting Social Security benefits without any financial penalty for claiming early.

Impact of raising retirement age at issue

Lawson objected to Alford’s suggestion that raising the retirement age would cut the federal budget.

“Rep. Alford justifies this by saying that 'people are living longer' but most Americans are not living longer. He also justifies it by pointing to the federal debt, but Social Security doesn’t add even a penny to the deficit, as President Ronald Reagan explained long ago.

“We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. It is completely unnecessary, and deeply immoral, to force nurses and firefighters to work long into their golden years. Instead, it's long past time for the wealthiest Americans, like Elon Musk, to contribute their fair share into Social Security."

Alford’s office did not respond to a request for comment from InsuranceNewsNet.

The congressman’s announcement is not the first time that Republicans have proposed raising the retirement age.

GOP proposal included Social Security Cuts

In March, the Republican Study Committee released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2025, which included cuts to Social Security.

One policy that has continually been included in RSC budget proposals for years is an increase to Social Security’s full retirement age. The RSC plan would push full retirement age to 69, leading to benefit cuts for a large majority of Americans.

According to a Center for American Progress analysis, a full retirement age of 69 would cut benefits for all new retirees between roughly 12.5% and 14.3% by the time it is fully phased in. In addition, it would cost a median-wage retiree who earned $70,000 in 2022 and turns 62 in 2034 thousands of dollars every year.

The size of the benefit reduction in relation to receiving full benefits would depend on the age at which someone claims Social Security, the analysis said.

For example, someone who claims Social Security at 62 under current law is subject to a maximum penalty of 30% on monthly benefits to make up for the fact that individual would be receiving payments for months or even years before their peers in the same birth cohort who may decide to wait before claiming benefits. Increasing full retirement age to 69 would raise this maximum penalty from 30% to 39%, cutting benefits by nearly 13%.

The Center for American Progress said that due to the timing of the phase-in, those turning 62 before 2027 would indeed be shielded from the RSC plan’s benefit cuts, but everyone else would suffer. Nearly 3 in 4 Americans—a total of more than 245 million people—would be subject to the increase in the full retirement age. The center said that both the total number and the proportion of Americans affected would only increase as time goes on.

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