Trump crows about Social Security boost —but there's a catch

President Donald Trump's administration boasted on Wednesday that they have boosted recipients' Social Security benefits by 3.6 percent for 2024 — yet they are leaving out a big part of the story.

“Social security will implement this cost-of-living adjustment for 76 million Americans, giving them greater financial stability,” the Social Security Administration commissioner Frank J Bisignano said in his statement. Yet the reason Social Security benefits are going up is prices jumped by 0.6 percent between August and September — and 3.7 percent from what they were one year ago. This means that the gains people receive in their Social Security benefits are more than cancelled out by what they lose.

"[It] reflects rising cost of living," former President Joe Biden's Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley told AlterNet on Wednesday. "Unless they’ve monkeyed with metrics to claim bigger increase than last year.”

He added, “It is pegged to inflation but lags by a year, so given the way Iran War has driven up the price of food etc, and the rising Medicare co-pay, this 3.6 will not keep pace with rising cost of living for elderly." Overall O'Malley concluded that "it is larger because prices are skyrocketing, and it is not keeping pace.”

Summing up the fundamental problem with the program, O'Malley said that "the purchasing power of benefits is eroding as billionaires get richer.”

Speaking to AlterNet in August, O'Malley offered his analysis on Trump's designs for the program.

"If we can protect Social Security through the Trump years from being privatized, looted, or funneled into cryptocurrency or Trump accounts, the future debate will really be about where to set that cap — income above $250,000, above $400,000, or somewhere in between," O'Malley told AlterNet. "I believe that's where the debate will be, if we can save Social Security from being dismantled entirely or turned into lump sums, with people told to save their own money or gamble it on the stock market, or trust that his cryptocurrency will keep rising in value as he devalues the full faith and credit of the United States."

Earlier in October, O'Malley also said that it is difficult to keep the program solvent in part because billionaires and others who are affluent do not want to pay increased Social Security taxes. If those who make $184,500 or more were forced to pay full taxes on their wealthy, he said, this would keep the fund solvent for years.

"I actually think as people come to understand the solution and what’s at stake as that cliff gets closer and closer, I think you’re going to find broad public support for requiring that the wealthiest of Americans pay the same Social Security tax rate that all of the rest of us do," O'Malley said.