Social Security | featured news

A new report says the Social Security Administration failed to properly record the deaths of 1.2 million Americans on a list that is distributed to federal agencies and private companies, making it likely that their families or others wrongly received benefits after they died.

The Social Security Administration is now providing workers with online statements of the estimated benefits they will get when they retire, replacing the paper ones the agency used to mail out. Until last year, the agency mailed yearly statements that showed the benefits a worker would collect if he or she retired at age 62, age 66 or age 70. It stopped the mailings to save an estimated $70 million a year.

Social Security is rushing even faster toward insolvency, driven by retiring baby boomers, a weak economy and politicians' reluctance to take painful action to fix the huge retirement and disability program.

An aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound are straining the long-term finances of Social Security and Medicare, the government's two largest benefit programs.

Tax reform sounds like a good idea to lots of people, but where to start? Eliminate the popular deduction for home mortgages? End the write-off for charitable contributions? How about expanding the Social Security payroll tax?

Democrats backed away from their demand for higher taxes on millionaires as part of legislation to extend Social Security tax cuts for most Americans on Wednesday as Congress struggled to clear critical year-end bills without triggering a partial government shutdown.

Republican officials say legislation being drafted in the House would renew an expiring program of unemployment benefits at a time of 9 percent joblessness. The measure also would extend a Social Security payroll tax cut. Both are due to expire at the end of the year. The officials say the cost of provisions will be offset to avoid increasing the deficit.

Americans are more likely than ever to reach age 90, redefining in a way what it means to be old. People who are 90 or older have nearly tripled in number since 1980, to 1.9 million, according to Thursday's first-ever census numbers on the age group. The trend is posing unique health challenges and adding to rising government costs for the strained Medicare and Social Security programs.

Some 55 million Social Security recipients will get a 3.6 percent increase in benefits next year, their first raise since 2009.

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is stepping up his attack on front-runner Rick Perry by posing six questions to the Texas governor on how ...