Social Security | featured news

Republican Rick Perry came under heavy fire on Social Security, jobs and his Texas record in a heated U.S. presidential debate on Monday as rivals tried to halt the front-runner's momentum.

In the book he wrote less than a year ago, Rick Perry calls Social Security a "failure" that should never have been enacted.

Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.

If the government can't pay all its bills come Wednesday, odds are it will pay bondholders. Social Security and Medicare recipients will be high on the must-pay list, too. Likely losers: federal workers in jobs deemed non-essential, private contractors and state and local governments....

President Obama seeks up to $4 trillion in deficit cuts, putting Social Security, Medicare, defense spending and tax reform on the table as part of a balanced approach to cuts, officials say.

The Social Security Administration made $6.5 billion in overpayments to people not entitled to receive them in 2009, including $4 billion under a supplemental income program for the very poor, a government investigator said Tuesday.

The bad economy has shortened the life of the trust funds that support Social Security and Medicare, the nation's two biggest benefit programs, the government reported Friday.

A federal shutdown looming Friday would stop processing of paper income tax filings to the IRS – at the height of tax season – and throw into question how cargo will be processed at the nation’s ports of entry and whether new claims for Social Security benefits will be authorized.

Millions of retired and disabled people in the United States had better brace for another year with no increase in Social Security payments....

Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later. And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI ...