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Social Security Solvency: Experts Sound Off
Social Security reform could involve some form of privatization.
By Evan Simonoff
FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, THERE’ S BEEN constant chatter about Social Security’ s impending shortfall, and people’ s fears have intensified in recent months as President Trump’ s DOGE committee has cited alarming statistics, some of them false, about waste and mismanagement at the agency.
But the DOGE worries might be a red herring. How do the actual experts feel about the prospects for the entitlement program?
One former deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration said he has other, far more pressing concerns.“ I’ m a fairly high-income [ individual ], I turn 65 in 2033 [ the year Social Security is estimated to become insolvent ], and I’ m not losing much sleep over it,” said Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and deputy commissioner of the agency under President George W. Bush.“ I am losing sleep over the fiscal condition of the United States.”
Biggs made the remarks at the American College of Financial Services’ Horizons conference in San Diego in early March.
Biggs was joined by Michael Finke, a professor at the American College, as well as Brandon Buckingham, vice president of advanced markets at Prudential Financial, and Jason Fichtner, executive director at the Alliance for Lifetime Income. Fichtner has also served as a deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration under Presidents Bush and Obama and as chief economist at the administration as well.
Could the next chapter of Social Security involve some form of privatization? Republicans might demand it, the panelists said. Fichtner noted that if the Social Security reform legislation in 1983 had included the system’ s use of a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds and other assets, the system would be solvent today and the current conversation about doomsday arriving in 2033 wouldn’ t be happening.
At the outset of the session, the panelists dismissed some of the recent outlandish claims about the mismanagement and waste at Social Security. They said, for instance, that the claim of millions of dead people receiving benefits is absurd.
The actual number of people over 100 years old receiving Social Security is about 44,000, which is“ about what you would expect,” Biggs said. Decades ago in its early years, though, the system did not perform a particularly accurate job of tracking deaths, he added.
Fichtner did say that the turmoil and job cuts at the Social Security Administration in the last month could impact service at the agency, which he said was experiencing a major“ brain drain.” He added that the people trying to contact the agency might encounter long waiting times. It“ won’ t impact current
54 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | APRIL 2025 WWW. FA-MAG. COM