Sponsors (7)
Official title: To improve the retirement security of United States families by strengthening Social Security.
Introduced June 11, 2026 by Linda T. Sánchez · Last progress June 11, 2026
The bill raises take-home pay for high earners and boosts benefits and protections for seniors, survivors, and SSI recipients by adopting elderly-focused inflation measures and benefit rules—but does so at the cost of higher program outlays, greater solvency risk, and added administrative complexity.
Seniors and Social Security beneficiaries will likely receive larger, more age-relevant cost-of-living adjustments because COLAs will be tied to an elderly-weighted CPI (CPI‑E) and a dedicated monthly elderly CPI will be developed.
Low-income SSI recipients will be protected from reductions in their SSI payments when their Social Security (title II) benefits rise after enactment, preserving eligibility and payment amounts.
Workers with earnings above the current Social Security/Medicare contribution base and self-employed individuals will keep more take-home pay beginning in 2028 because high earnings will be phased out of payroll taxation.
The bill increases near- and long-term costs for Social Security, Medicare-related payroll tax relief, survivor benefits, and SSI protections, heightening solvency pressures on trust funds and raising the likelihood of future benefit cuts or tax increases.
Implementing new benefit rules and a new elderly CPI will create administrative complexity and compliance costs (for employers, BLS, SSA), requiring staff reallocation or hiring and risking delays or errors in benefit administration.
Phasing out payroll taxation on high earnings shifts fiscal pressure away from top earners and could implicitly shift future costs onto lower earners or general taxpayers, raising equity concerns and potential future tax or benefit changes.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Phases out payroll-tax treatment above the taxable base, raises and retools Social Security benefit formulas, switches COLAs to a CPI-E, revises survivor benefits, and freezes Title II amounts used for SSI.
Makes multiple changes to Social Security financing and benefit rules: phases out application of Social Security/Medicare payroll tax rules to earnings above the contribution/benefit base between 2028 and 2032, restructures the primary insurance amount (PIA) formula to raise the first bend-point percentage and add a "surplus AIME" component beginning 2032, shifts COLA calculations to a Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers (CPI-E) starting with COLA quarters ending Sept. 30, 2027, changes survivor (widow/widower) benefit formulas for months after Dec. 2027, requires BLS to publish a CPI-E series monthly, and freezes the countable Title II benefit amount used in SSI determinations at the pre-enactment level. Together these provisions increase statutory benefit calculations and COLA indexing while reducing payroll-tax treatment of high earners above the taxable base, add new administrative tasks (PIA recomputations and a new BLS index), and freeze Title II inputs to SSI eligibility and payment calculations.