MI-4 Priorities · Entitlement Durability

Social Security and Medicare: the dated cliff and the votes that touch it

Both programs are headed toward a real, dated cliff. That makes every vote touching either of them a test of the same question: what does this do for the people who'll depend on the program in fifteen years, and what does it do for today's beneficiaries? Those two effects can point in different directions. Huizenga has one clear vote in this space, and it has both kinds of effect.

Last reviewed Sept. 25, 2026 · Updated Oct. 22, 2026 · Corrections log

Relevant test: Long-Term Durability

Corrected Oct. 12, 2026: the previous version said the Fiscal Commission Act "has had no markup or floor vote in either Congress it has been introduced in." The earlier version, H.R. 5779, was marked up and approved 22–12 by the House Budget Committee on Jan. 18, 2024; it didn't reach the floor. The current version, H.R. 3289, has had no markup or floor vote.

Corrected Sept. 25, 2026: the previous version said no public statement from Huizenga explaining his Social Security Fairness Act vote had been found. His Nov. 26, 2024 newsletter explained it, and that explanation is now quoted.

Corrected Sept. 23, 2026: an earlier version of this page labeled its projections as the 2025 Trustees Report while showing the 2026 report's late-2032 OASI date, and cited a 24% Social Security cut and a 12% Medicare hospital-payment cut. All figures now come from the June 2026 Trustees Reports, which project roughly 22% and 11% shortfalls.

Corrected Sept. 23, 2026: an earlier version combined a 2017 tax-law estimate that included interest ($2.3 trillion) with an H.R. 1 estimate that didn't ($3.4 trillion), for a "$5.7 trillion" total. It also said both votes were cast "with none of the offsetting revenue or spending cuts," although H.R. 1 included about $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and SNAP reductions. Both laws are now counted with interest included (about $1.9–2.3 trillion and $4.1 trillion, respectively), and H.R. 1's partial offsets are noted.

Corrected Sept. 23, 2026 (second update): an earlier version attributed the estimate that the Social Security Fairness Act moves trust-fund exhaustion about six months earlier to SSA's Chief Actuary. That estimate comes from CBO (Nov. 2024). A "roughly $233 billion including interest" figure that couldn't be tied to a source has been removed. The payroll-tax figure is updated from CRFB's older 4.6 points to the 2026 Trustees' 4.42 points. The page title and lede have also been reworded to describe tradeoffs rather than grade the votes.

Corrected Sept. 23, 2026 (third update): the second update described 4.42 percentage points as the payroll-tax increase that would close Social Security's 75-year gap. In the 2026 Trustees Report, 4.42% of taxable payroll is the program's 75-year actuarial deficit. The report gives the equivalent immediate, permanent payroll-tax increase as 4.25 points (12.40% to 16.65%) to pay scheduled benefits through 2100, or 4.43 points (to 16.83%) to also meet the report's end-of-period reserve target. The paragraph below now uses the report's own figures.

Context: "insolvent" doesn't mean a trust fund vanishes to zero and pays nothing — by law, it means incoming payroll tax revenue can only cover a fraction of scheduled benefits, forcing an automatic cut unless Congress acts first. The dates below are the government's own projections for when that automatic cut would hit.

The clock, in the government's own words

2026 Trustees Reports

Late 2032

Projected exhaustion date (fourth quarter of 2032) for Social Security's Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund, absent congressional action. The 2025 report had projected the first quarter of 2033.

Source: 2026 Social Security Trustees Report

2033

Projected exhaustion date (second quarter of 2033) for Medicare's Hospital Insurance (Part A) trust fund, one quarter earlier than in the 2025 report.

Source: 2026 Medicare Trustees Report

The bigger picture: $40 trillion and counting

U.S. Treasury, CRFB

$40.4T

Total federal debt outstanding on Oct. 20, 2026. The government crossed $40 trillion for the first time on Aug. 18, 2026, and the total is now about $0.7 trillion below the $41.1T debt limit H.R. 1 set in 2025.

Source: U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny

~22%

Automatic, across-the-board cut to Social Security retirement and survivor benefits when the OASI trust fund runs dry in late 2032, unless Congress acts first. The 2026 Trustees project that incoming revenue would then cover 78% of scheduled benefits.

Source: 2026 Social Security Trustees Report; see also Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget summary

~11%

Automatic cut to Medicare hospital payments when the HI trust fund runs dry in 2033, by the same mechanism. The 2026 Trustees project that HI income would then cover 89% of scheduled costs.

Source: 2026 Medicare Trustees Report; see also Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget summary (a nonpartisan budget-policy group, not a government source)

None of the serious options for heading that off are painless, and none of them are secret. On the Social Security side, the 2026 Trustees Report puts Social Security's 75-year actuarial deficit at 4.42% of taxable payroll. Paying scheduled benefits through 2100 would take the equivalent of an immediate, permanent payroll-tax increase from 12.40% to 16.65% (4.25 percentage points, split between workers and employers), or an immediate 25.2% cut in scheduled benefits. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget-policy group, has modeled the rest of the menu for years: gradually raising the retirement age from 67 to 70 closes about a third of it; some combination of a higher payroll tax cap, slower benefit growth for higher earners, and a later retirement age closes the rest. Medicare's version of the same menu runs through higher payroll contributions, provider payment reform, and prescription-drug cost changes. Every one of those levers means someone pays more or gets less, starting now, so that someone else's benefit is still there in fifteen years. There is no version of "shoring up" these programs that doesn't cost real money or ask for real sacrifice today.

Set that against Huizenga's own record on the other side of the ledger. In 2017, representing the old MI-2 seat, he voted yes twice — on Nov. 16 and again on Dec. 20 — for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In April 2018, CBO estimated that it would add about $1.9 trillion to deficits over 2018–2028, including added interest and after accounting for its projected boost to economic growth. Before that growth effect, the figure was roughly $2.3 trillion. In 2025, representing MI-4, he voted yes twice more for H.R. 1, which CBO estimates adds $4.1 trillion to deficits over 2025–2034 including interest. Counted on the same basis, with interest included, the two laws add roughly $6.0–6.4 trillion over their respective ten-year windows. H.R. 1 did include offsets, about $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and SNAP reductions, but they covered only part of its cost. Neither law included the kind of dedicated Social Security or Medicare financing changes that would make the math above any easier to solve. That's the contrast. He is lead sponsor of the Fiscal Commission Act (H.R. 3289), a bill designed to force an up-or-down vote on a long-term fiscal plan. He has also repeatedly voted yes on deficit-increasing legislation that makes that plan harder to write. The earlier version, H.R. 5779, was approved 22–12 by the House Budget Committee at a markup on Jan. 18, 2024 but didn't reach the floor. The current H.R. 3289 hasn't had a markup or floor vote. Both things belong on the same page, because they're both his record.

The one clear vote: popular, unpaid-for, and real

House Clerk record

On Nov. 12, 2024, Huizenga voted yes on the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), which passed 327–75 and repealed two provisions — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that had reduced Social Security benefits for roughly 2.4 million people with public-sector pensions, including many teachers, firefighters, and police officers. It is popular, and the fairness argument behind it is substantive: people who paid into these systems felt penalized for it. He explained his vote in his newsletter two weeks later: "Passing this legislation was the right thing to do on behalf of the millions of police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other public servants who deserve their full retirement benefits" (Huizenga Huddle, Nov. 26, 2024). The explanation doesn't address the bill's cost or its effect on the trust funds, described next.

It's also, by CBO's own numbers, the kind of long-run tradeoff this section is about. The repeal wasn't offset with any other savings. CBO estimated $196 billion in added outlays through 2034. In a November 2024 analysis, CBO projected that the OASI trust fund, and the combined Social Security trust funds, would be exhausted roughly half a year earlier than under prior law. A member can support this bill on fairness grounds while the vote itself still shortens the runway before automatic benefit cuts hit everyone on Social Security, not just the retirees it helped. Both things are true at once, and neither cancels the other out.

What's not measured yet: any standalone Huizenga vote or bill directly restructuring Social Security or Medicare benefits, financing, or eligibility — as opposed to the one expansion vote covered here. If one exists, it hasn't surfaced in this research yet. His Medicaid, ACA, and Medicare-related healthcare votes and bills are covered in Healthcare & Coverage. See Methodology for the sourcing rules, or the Priorities index for the rest of this section.