Is Social Security a drag on national debt? Depends on how you define “debt.”
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The national debt is tremendous and growing. And as lawmakers talk about ways to address it, Social Security spending — which totals roughly $1.5 trillion a year — is often brought up as playing a big role. But by law, Social Security cannot contribute to the national debt. Today, we’ll parse exactly how the Social Security Administration invests money and pays out. Then, heat insurance in India has helped thousands of female workers.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Is Social Security a drag on National Debt? It depends on your definition of debt. |
| 0:07.0 | For Marketplace, I'm Nova Safeway for David Brancaccio. Happy 4th of July. |
| 0:12.0 | There are all kinds of ideas for how to shrink the government's |
| 0:15.2 | annual budget shortfall and minimize its impact on the national debt. There are |
| 0:20.4 | also a lot of ideas about which federal spending actually contributes to annual |
| 0:24.7 | deficits. Social security, for example. |
| 0:27.6 | Marketplace's senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams is here with more on this. |
| 0:31.2 | Good morning, Kimberly. |
| 0:32.2 | Good morning, November. |
| 0:33.0 | So when politicians talk about the national debt, Social Security spending often comes up as playing |
| 0:38.6 | a big role. Why is that? |
| 0:40.0 | Almost 70 million Americans receive Social Security benefits and that program pays out about |
| 0:45.2 | one and a half trillion dollars a year, but that is more than the program brings in from payroll |
| 0:50.8 | taxes. |
| 0:51.8 | So according to Ramina Bacha at the Cato Institute, the |
| 0:54.9 | federal government has to use deficit spending to close that gap. |
| 0:58.8 | Social security has added more than $110 billion to the national debt in 2023 and will add more than 500 |
| 1:06.4 | billion to the national debt by 2033 because in order for Treasury to continue to pay full |
| 1:12.3 | benefits it has to raise money by issuing |
| 1:16.1 | new bonds. |
| 1:17.7 | She mentions 2033 there because that's one of the estimates for when the Social Security |
| 1:22.4 | Trust Fund will run out. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.