Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute said the Congressional Budget Office Social Security projection points to a problem that payroll taxes alone cannot easily solve: closing the funding gap would force typical workers to pay thousands of dollars more each year. She said raising the payroll tax to 17% could add $2,600 to $3,000 annually for a median worker earning about $62,000.
“It's financially impossible for most workers to bear that additional cost, so Congress will need to look at other options,” she said in a CBS News interview.
Romina Boccia on worker costs
Boccia said the burden would not fall on workers alone. Workers and employers generally split the payroll tax equally, while self-employed workers pay the full amount. She also said the people she was talking about often do not have much cushion, adding: “Most of the individuals we're talking about... don't even have $400 set aside to respond to an emergency.”
The calculation starts with the current 12.4% payroll tax and moves it to 17%. Cato said that change would replenish the fund and let Social Security pay benefits in full for the foreseeable future. The proposal would also change the bill for people above the wage base and below it differently because only income up to the current $184,500 cap is taxed.
Social Security cap debate
In July, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Moreno called for lifting the payroll tax cap. A 2025 Bipartisan Policy Center poll of more than 4,000 Americans found 65% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans supported lifting or removing the cap, and a majority of households earning more than $200,000 a year backed the same idea.
Boccia said that support exists “in part because people like the idea of making someone else pay.” The numbers show the political divide: many Americans favor a cap change, while her estimate says a payroll-tax-only fix would land as a new annual cost for typical workers and employers.
2032 trust fund deadline
Social Security now pays out more in benefits than it collects through payroll taxes, so it is drawing on its retirement trust fund to cover the gap. The trust fund is projected to run out in 2032 unless Congress acts, and benefits could be cut by about 22% if that happens.
Congress has not settled on one fix. Lawmakers could raise payroll taxes, lift the tax cap, cut future benefits, or use a mix of those steps, and Boccia’s warning is that any plan built only on higher payroll taxes would push the cost onto workers who already have little room to absorb it.
