Sponsors (15)
The bill redirects a small, variable share of public-lands receipts to Social Security—providing a modest, non‑tax source of solvency help and protecting current local revenue shares—while leaving overall fiscal gains uncertain, creating potential local revenue uncertainty if classifications change, and imposing administrative costs on agencies.
Seniors and future retirees: directs 10% of Interior and Forest Service public-lands receipts into the Social Security trust fund, which could modestly strengthen benefit solvency.
Taxpayers: uses existing federal public-lands receipts (rather than new general-tax revenue) to fund Social Security, reducing near-term pressure for payroll tax increases.
State, tribal, territorial, and local governments: preserves current revenue-sharing by explicitly prohibiting reductions to amounts they receive from covered public lands.
Taxpayers and beneficiaries: the 10% transfer is modest and tied to variable public-lands receipts, so the actual fiscal benefit to Social Security solvency may be limited and uncertain.
State, tribal, territorial, and local governments: could face reduced future receipts or uncertainty if agencies or Congress reclassify which receipts are subject to the 10% transfer, complicating local budget planning.
Federal agencies (Interior, Agriculture): creates an administrative and compliance burden to track, report, and transfer 10% of covered-lands receipts annually, requiring accounting changes and added costs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires annual deposits equal to 10% of prior‑year revenue from specified federal public lands into the Social Security trust fund, without reducing existing state/tribal/local revenue shares.
Directs the Interior Department and the Forest Service to deposit 10% each fiscal year of prior-year receipts from designated federal public lands into the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (the Social Security trust fund). The law defines which public lands are covered and says the deposit cannot be achieved by raising prices for activities that generate the revenue and cannot reduce revenue shares already sent to states, Indigenous communities, territories, or local governments.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Paul Gosar · Last progress January 3, 2025