Anne Tergesen

speaker

4,485 appearances 83 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2017 last heard Feb 2025

Anne Tergesen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Social Security Payments Could Be Affected if U.S. Hits Debt Limit · 15 May 2023 podcast

Social Security has been actually running for years, ran a surplus. matched

So it built up a surplus account. matched

It's known as the Social Security Trust Fund. matched

And I think there's about $2.8 trillion in that account right now. matched

Some people think that the government could actually raid that account in order to finance and pay Social Security checks if they do have a problem with matched

the debt ceiling and cannot borrow in order to finance everything, other people disagree. matched

So it's really, as far as I could tell, there's no clear answer on that. matched

Well, so first of all, it's not clear that they would only pay 80 percent of Social Security benefits. matched

I think in 2011, when we came close to having a problem like this, the discussion was that the government would wait until they had adequate money come in to meet each bill as it came due. matched

So it might not be cutting benefits. matched

the, you know, cutting back on payments by 20 percent, what it might mean is that, you know, in order to get your full Social Security check, the check will be delayed, you know, and initially the delays would be probably pretty short. matched

But then if this goes on over time, you could experience longer delays. matched

So it seems like at least to the extent that people are speculating on this, that they're speculating there will be delays rather than cuts and benefits. matched

It's very unclear what they're talking about behind closed doors. matched

But in the past, in 1996, to breaching the debt limit, Social Security checks were coming due very soon. matched

And Congress authorized Treasury to go out and borrow the amount needed in order to pay those Social Security checks that were coming due soon. matched

And they exempted that additional borrowing from the debt limit. matched

So some say Congress could do something like that. matched

Now, that said, there was a proposal, there was a bill introduced by a couple of House Republicans earlier this spring that would have done exactly that. matched

But I don't think it has the port that it needs to pass. matched

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