A little more time for Social Security and Medicare funds
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The good news: The forecasted date at which the Social Security and Medicare trust fund can’t pay full benefits for everyone was pushed back a few years in a report issued Monday. Bad news: That day is still coming, unless Congress acts. Also: aging in place or stuck in place? The challenges of homeownership later in life. Later in the episode: Reddit’s revenue and union organizing efforts in the South.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on the program today, going broke, going public, and going down to Alabama from American public. |
| 0:10.0 | This is Marketplace. |
| 0:13.0 | In Baltimore, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Risdahl. It's Tuesday, May 7th. |
| 0:27.0 | Good to have you with us. |
| 0:28.0 | There's some moderately good news this week for those who depend or soon will depend on Medicare and Social Security |
| 0:35.6 | benefits. The money that pays for those programs will last a little longer than previously |
| 0:40.8 | expected, per the latest reports to Congress. |
| 0:44.0 | The so-called go broke date for Social Security has been pushed back one year to 2035. |
| 0:50.5 | For Medicare, that date's been extended an additional five years to |
| 0:54.2 | 2036. What happens after that remains a huge problem to solve though. |
| 1:00.0 | Marketplace's Sabrie Benesishor, has more. |
| 1:03.0 | If the Pentagon wants money, Congress decides, or sometimes fails to decide, to give it. |
| 1:08.0 | Also, how much to give and how to pay for it. |
| 1:11.0 | That is not how Social Security and Medicare work. The Social Security and Medicare work. |
| 1:13.9 | The Social Security and Medicare programs operate out of trust funds. |
| 1:17.5 | They're not part of the federal budget. |
| 1:19.8 | Bill Sweeney is Senior Vice President for government affairs at AARP. |
| 1:23.0 | Money goes into these trust funds from taxes on our paychecks |
| 1:26.0 | and goes out to people who've reached retirement age. |
| 1:29.0 | No Congress, just formulas, and math. |
| 1:31.0 | Unfortunately, the math isn't mathing. |
| 1:34.0 | When the program was set up, there were about four workers for every person receiving Social Security benefits. |
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