Sioux City Times

U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra (R-Hull) has introduced the Save Our Seniors Act, a bill aimed at safeguarding the long-term stability of Social Security. The legislation would require the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to provide a clear projection of Social Security’s financial health in its annual ten-year economic outlook.

“After a lifetime of hard work, our seniors deserve to retire with dignity and receive the Social Security benefits that they earned. However, thanks to reckless government spending and congressional inaction, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of sufficient funds by 2033 to pay Social Security benefits in full. It’s wrong and absolutely unacceptable,” said Rep. Feenstra. “That’s why I introduced the Save Our Seniors Act to help protect the long-term solvency of Social Security by requiring the Congressional Budget Office to include an honest and accurate projection of Social Security’s financial health in its annual ten-year economic outlook. This fix will ensure that our seniors receive their Social Security checks on time and in full while demanding real solutions from Congress to keep the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for generations to come. Serving on the House Ways and Means Committee’s Social Security Subcommittee, I will continue to work to ensure that our seniors and workers receive the benefits that they deserve and have earned while strengthening our nation’s fiscal foundation.”

Matthew Dickerson, Director of Budget Policy at the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), commented on the proposal: “Representative Feenstra’s Save Our Seniors Act is a commonsense proposal to require more transparency from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO’s baseline does not actually reflect current law, providing a misleading picture of what would happen when the Social Security Trust Fund is depleted within the next decade. It is crucial for Congress and the American people to understand the truth, so we can instead achieve better results for seniors and taxpayers.”

The proposed legislation would require a simple graph showing projections for the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Fund in each CBO economic outlook report. While similar visualizations appear in other reports such as those from trustees overseeing Social Security, these are not currently part of widely referenced CBO documents used by lawmakers and economists.

Feenstra has represented Iowa's 4th district in Congress since 2021 after serving over a decade in the Iowa Senate https://feenstra.house.gov/about/. He was born in Hull, Iowa in 1969 and graduated from Dordt University https://www.dordt.edu/ with a BA.