Sick and tired of hearing and reading news stories about the pressing need to cut your earned Social Security benefits? So are we. Media Matters shed some light on this fatigue by pointing out a whopping 68% of media coverage on Social Security in the first six months of this year focused on cutting, not strengthening, benefits. 

Social Security’s Trust Fund is currently in surplus and can pay out full benefits until 2033. Modest changes to bolster Social Security’s long-term finances can include raising the payroll tax cap so millionaires and billionaires pay the same percentage of income to Social Security as the rest of us do. 

Another reason we shouldn't talk about cutting Social Security? Benefits are already too low and should be increased. 

Media Matters writes:

The Economic Policy Institute argued, contrary to most news coverage, that the challenges facing Social Security are “modest and manageable.” Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman had a similar reaction to the latest Social Security report, noting “the system will be able to pay most of its scheduled benefits as far as the eye can see.” Krugman also recognized the irrationality of arguments made by those who claim to want to save Social Security from eventual collapse:

“The risk is that we might, at some point in the future, have to cut benefits; to avoid this risk of future benefit cuts, we are supposed to act pre-emptively by...cutting future benefits. What problem, exactly, are we solving here?”

To follow regular fact-checking on Social Security and Medicare media coverage, check out Equal Time by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Read why the AFL-CIO supports expanding, not cutting, Social Security. 

Working families are calling on Congress to oppose any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (including the so-called “Chained” CPI) and to repeal the job-killing sequester.