Drum Roll Please

      Social Security’s Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) effective next year is 3.6%. The cap on wages subject to the FICA tax will be $192,300, up from $184,500.

How?

      A quote from Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano reported in The Hill:

This is a long journey. [Social Security] is 90 years old. It’ll be around for another 90 years.

Loss In Court On Job Loss

      From Human Resources Director:

The Social Security Administration can press ahead with plans to cut 7,000 jobs after a court threw out a disability discrimination challenge to the layoffs. 

Five advocacy organisations and seven individuals receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits had argued the cuts - roughly 12 percent of SSA’s 57,000-strong workforce - created “systemic access barriers” that hit people with disabilities harder than everyone else. They pointed to prolonged phone delays, reduced field office hours, missing sign language interpreters, and an online portal that kept locking them out. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed all three claims on October 9, 2026.  …

Not Something You Expect A Commissioner To Do

      A tweet from yesterday by Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano:

It was a privilege to ring the @NYSE Opening Bell this morning to commemorate Columbus Day and celebrate Italian American heritage. 🔔 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 

I was honored to do so alongside many friends including true legends of business Ken Langone, Dick Grasso, and Vinnie Viola.

Social Security Beneficiaries To Lose $2,000 A Year Due To Trump Immigration Policies

      From The Guardian:

Elderly Americans can expect to lose an average of $2,152 in annual social security benefits each, a projected 8.6% reduction in their retirement payments, by 2034 and every year after as a direct consequence of the economic fallout from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration campaign, if that carries on, according to a new report shared exclusively with the Guardian. …

The report, Economic Impacts of Trump Administration Immigration Policy, was commissioned by America’s Voice and conducted by researchers at Economic Insights and Research Consulting, a firm focused on economic analysis. …

The federal government risks losing a large segment of the $26bn in payroll taxes from unauthorized immigrants who help to support the US social security fund that pays out to American seniors – while not being able to access those benefits themselves.  …

Workers Comp Offset Problems

      From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

The Social Security Act (Act) requires that SSA reduce Social Security disability benefits when a beneficiary receives workers’ compensation (WC) or a Public Disability Benefit (PDB). However, WC/PDB does not reduce SSA retirement benefits. Thus, when disabled beneficiaries reach age 62, SSA employees must determine whether they are eligible for higher retirement benefits and notify beneficiaries as early as possible about their option to file. The application filing date sets the earliest month of entitlement, as SSA can only pay retirement benefits retroactively to that month. Delays may result in lost benefits. Starting February 13, 2026, SSA employees must present filing options without offering advice and document these discussions, as beneficiaries’ decisions can impact their benefits. 

From a population of 35,185 disabled beneficiaries, we reviewed a sample of 125 beneficiaries from the Master Beneficiary Record who attained age 62 from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2022 and whose disability benefits were offset by WC/PDB. 

Of the 125 beneficiaries we sampled, SSA employees were not required to notify 53 (42 percent) because their disability benefits after WC/PDB offset were higher than the retirement benefits. Employees were required to notify 72 (58 percent); however, they did not notify 31 beneficiaries (25 percent). Employees were required to notify the remaining 41 (33 percent) beneficiaries and did so, as required. …

     This report concerns what claimants’ attorneys, at least, refer to as the RIB-DIB election. The usual assumption is that many workers comp off sets will be done incorrectly. I imagine that even most Social Security employees don’t understand the offset. That’s OK. The whole subject of workers compensation offsets is complicated. Most agency employees don’t have to deal with it. It’s one of those complications that can’t even be imagined by the current Commissioner who probably believes that Social Security is simple, its employees aren’t very bright (because if they were bright they wouldn’t be working in government) and that those employees are fungible.  In truth, the agency’s business is often complicated and its employees undertrained and lacking in the time needed to get everything right.

Right Wing Having A Tough Time Facing Reality

      From Newsweek:

… In a survey from the Cato Institute, 89 percent of Americans over age 65 said Social Security benefits should be protected even if it meant higher taxes for younger workers. 

This sparked conservative backlash on social media. 

“Just as it isn’t boomers’s fault that politicians stole their social security — or that leftists of all generations voted for the pols who did it — it’s not the responsibility of the generations that follow to make up for it by giving up more of our incomes,” conservative radio host Dana Loesch wrote on X.  

Political commentator Matt Walsh wrote: “Stealing from young families to pay much higher net worth Boomers is immoral and ridiculous. Young families already have to deal with an economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for Boomers at the same age. Older people clamoring to raise taxes on the young, on top of it all, is just perverse.” … 

“Just as it isn’t boomers’s fault that politicians stole their social security — or that leftists of all generations voted for the pols who did it — it’s not the responsibility of the generations that follow to make up for it by giving up more of our incomes,” conservative radio host Dana Loesch wrote on X. 

Political commentator Matt Walsh wrote: “Stealing from young families to pay much higher net worth Boomers is immoral and ridiculous. Young families already have to deal with an economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for Boomers at the same age. Older people clamoring to raise taxes on the young, on top of it all, is just perverse.”  …

Some Clergy Want A New Deal

      It’s poorly advertised but clergy can opt out of Social Security. Here’s how it works:

… To opt out of Social Security, ordained ministers must sign Form 4361 “Application for Exemption from Self-Employment Tax for Use by Ministers, Members of Religious Orders and Christian Science Practitioners.” The form does not say, “If you are a minister and prefer not to pay these taxes, sign here.” If you read the form carefully, it says that you are conscientiously opposed or opposed because of your religious principles to “the acceptance…of any public insurance that makes payments in the event of death, disability, old age, or retirement; or that makes payments toward the cost of, or provides services for, medicare” in exchange for services you perform as a minister. In other words, signing Form 4361 means that, as a minister, you oppose receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits for your ministerial work 

   Some of those who exercised this option want to get out of the deal they made. As World reports:

… Members of the clergy would have a chance to join Social Security under a bill passed by the Senate this week. The bill, which is headed to President Trump’s desk for signing, creates a two-year window for clergy members to opt in to Social Security and Medicare benefits. Currently, clergy members can opt out of those programs to avoid associated taxes on ministerial earnings. Their decision to re-enroll is irrevocable. If signed into law, the window for re-enrollment would begin in 2029.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, or ERLC, on Thursday said its members were thrilled that the Senate passed the Clergy Act this week.  …

     You may notice I have little sympathy for the clergy members wanting to remove the irrevocability. I imagine that some, like monks under a vow of poverty, are sincere (but they’re probably not trying to revoke their choice.) The rest, I strongly doubt that many are or were sincere. You knew the deal going in and now you start realizing that opting out of Social Security may not be have been such a great idea so you want to renegotiate the deal. Besides

     Doesn’t this come under the “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” provision that is part of the faith, at least for Christians? I guess that’s why most clergy don’t exercise this option.

     By the way, have you run into the “Love Offering” dodge, as in “I never received wages for being a minister, I received “Love Offerings” and those are gifts so they’re not taxable”? Yeah, that’s just as sincere.