In March, the Republican RSC Study Committee released its budget proposal for next year’s fiscal year, which included significant cuts to Social Security, committee members are about 80% of all Republican lawmakers in the U.S.
House of Representatives, as well as the entire House Republican leadership, indicating that the policies outlined in his budget proposal are important priorities for the House Republican bloc. One policy that has been consistently included in CSR budget proposals for years is an increase in the Social Security Full Retirement Age (FRA), the age at which older adults can count on access to benefits.
Social Security retirement benefits without being financially penalized for retiring early, the FRA is 67 under the law today, but the RSC plan would push it back to 69, leading to drastic benefit cuts for a large portion of the United States citizens, while the rise of the FRA is overwhelmingly unpopular among American citizens, it has enjoyed the support of certain more extreme far-right groups in Washington DC, including the Heritage Foundation, which heads the authoritarian manual that is now known as Project 2025.
Republicans Propose Raising Social Security FRA to 69
This is notable because Project 2025’s 900-page Leadership Mandate does not propose any solutions for Social Security and says, on page 710, that its proposals for the program cannot be “addressed here in depth.”
It is important to note that that line was co-written by economist Stephen Moore, who has advocated for cuts and privatization of Social Security, once calling it a “Ponzi scheme” and encouraging students to burn their Social Security cards.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, has also gone on record that the Leadership Mandate manifesto is only the basis of his plan and “there are parts of the plan that we will not share with the left,” last month, his organization called for increasing the retirement age, and the author of that analysis, Rachel Greszler, is listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
Understanding the RSC’s plan to increase the retirement age, the RSC’s FY 2025 budget proposal borrows much of its Social Security language from its FY 2024 counterpart, however, the specific details on the plan to increase the FRA did not arise from the FY 2024 budget proposal itself, but from Roll Call’s report on comments made by RSC Budget and Spending Working Group Chairman Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.).
How the GOP’s Social Security Changes Could Impact Your Retirement Plans
On behalf of the CSR, this is critically important because, despite dedicating six pages to a section about Social Security, the document’s policy proposals for the program were only minimized to one paragraph, and the increase in the FRA is mentioned in a single sentence, on page 108 “For example, the CSR budget, modest adjustments could also be made to the retirement age for future retirees, to take into account increases in life expectancy.”
Fortunately, Rep. Cline’s comments provided some extra information, stating that the FRA would increase three months per year, starting with those who turn 62 in 2026, until it increases two years and goes from 67 to 69, then the new FRA age at 69 would be fully implemented for those who turn 62 in 2033, taking into account that the language of this proposal has remained the same from year to year, possibly this schedule will simply be delayed by one year with the fiscal year 2025 version.
This means that the gradual implementation would begin with those who turn 62 in 2027 and end with those who turn 62 in 2034.
