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Question-and-answer session, 2026-10-05 (the record this investigation started from)

This investigation began as seven questions put to an AI assistant (Claude) on 2026-10-05. The answers below are reproduced as they were given, so that a reader can see where the report came from and what changed when each statement was checked against a saved government document. The report pages supersede these answers. Answers 1 to 4 were written from the assistant's general knowledge, without consulting documents; answers 5 to 7 used web searches of the 2026 Trustees Reports and secondary coverage. Every figure that the report uses was afterwards re-sourced to a government document saved under sources/ and recorded with its exact wording in data/claims_*.jsonl; the corrections that process produced are listed in AUDIT_SUMMARY.md (Section 4) and summarized at the top of each answer here.

Formatting has been kept; the closing "For govspends" remarks were addressed to the person asking and are kept as written. Two things are condensed: the source links at the end of answers 6 and 7 are listed by title, and a closing remark in answer 7 about the assistant's own tool use (not about the subject) is omitted.

Question 1. Does the US Federal Government track what it has spent versus authorized by law?

Corrections found when sourcing: see AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4 (items under Question 1).

Yes. The federal government tracks this closely, account by account. But "authorized by law" covers three different things, and the tracking is strong for some of them and weak for others.

The three levels

  1. Authorization. A law creates a program and sometimes says how much "is authorized to be appropriated." No money moves at this stage.
  2. Appropriation (budget authority). The legal permission to spend. Agencies may only obligate against this.
  3. Obligations and outlays. Obligations are the contracts and commitments agencies make. Outlays are the cash that actually goes out.

The government tracks spending against appropriations rigorously. It tracks it against authorizations only loosely.

Spending vs. appropriations: tracked in detail

  • SF-133, Report on Budget Execution and Budgetary Resources. Every Treasury Account Symbol reports this through Treasury's GTAS system. It shows budgetary resources, obligations, unobligated balances and outlays. It's filed quarterly, monthly for large accounts, and published on OMB's MAX portal.
  • Apportionment (SF-132). OMB releases appropriated money to agencies in portions, and agencies can't obligate beyond what's been released. Congress required these to be published starting in FY2022. In 2025 OMB took the site down, and a court ordered it restored. That's from memory, so check the current status.
  • Antideficiency Act (31 U.S.C. §1341, §1517). Obligating beyond an appropriation or apportionment is illegal. Violations must be reported to the President, Congress and GAO, and GAO keeps a public database of these reports.
  • Impoundment Control Act. This covers the opposite problem: spending less than appropriated. GAO rules on suspected impoundments, and there were several such decisions in 2025.
  • Public data. The Monthly Treasury Statement and the annual Combined Statement of Receipts, Outlays, and Balances (fiscaldata.treasury.gov) give official outlays by account. USAspending.gov has account-level budgetary resources, obligations and outlays from DATA Act File A, which comes from GTAS.

Spending vs. authorizations: weak

  • CBO's annual report, Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations. This is the main comparison. It typically finds several hundred billion dollars a year appropriated for programs whose authorization has lapsed. That's legal, because an appropriation can fund a program whose authorization has run out.
  • Authorization levels aren't spending caps. Appropriators routinely go above or below them, and no accounting system checks one against the other.
  • Mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, interest) is roughly two-thirds of outlays. It runs on permanent, indefinite authority with no dollar ceiling, so there's no fixed number to compare against. It's only tracked against projections.

Caveats if you compare the numbers yourself

  • Outlays in a year don't match that year's appropriations. Multi-year and no-year money gets spent over several years. Compare obligations to budget authority within the same Treasury account, not annual outlays to annual appropriations.
  • Data quality is mixed. The government-wide financial statements have never received a clean audit opinion. DoD has failed every full audit, and GAO keeps flagging gaps in USAspending data. Treasury and SF-133 totals are reliable. Award-level detail is less so.

For govspends: the cleanest machine-readable source for "spent vs. available" is the USAspending API's federal-account endpoints, or the SF-133 files, using one row per Treasury account. For the authorization side, CBO's expired-authorizations report is the only systematic source I know of, and it comes as PDF tables rather than an API.

Question 2. How is multi-year and no-year money identified and tracked?

Corrections found when sourcing: the account numbers in the example table (075 2025 0512 and so on) were illustrative, not a real account; the report uses a real federal account with annual, multi-year and no-year Treasury Account Symbols taken from USAspending. Other items: AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

Through the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS): every appropriation is booked to a TAS that encodes its period of availability, so annual, multi-year, and no-year money each live in their own sub-account, and all tracking happens per TAS.

1. How the law sets it

The appropriation's wording determines the type:

Statutory language Type
(no period stated — default is one fiscal year) Annual (one-year)
"to remain available until September 30, 2027" Multi-year
"to remain available until expended" No-year

Mandatory programs and trust funds are usually no-year by construction.

2. How the TAS encodes it

A component TAS has these fields: agency, main account, beginning period of availability (BPOA), ending period of availability (EPOA), availability type code, and some sub-account fields.

Type BPOA / EPOA Availability type Legacy display
Annual FY2025 2025 / 2025 blank 075 2025 0512
Multi-year FY2025–27 2025 / 2027 blank 075 2025/2027 0512
No-year blank X 075 X 0512

The agency (here 075) and the main account (0512) stay the same across all of these. Each new year's appropriation for an annual or multi-year account creates a new TAS. So one "federal account" (agency plus main account) is usually several TAS rows running side by side, one per period of availability, plus an X row if there's no-year money.

3. The life cycle of a fixed-period TAS

The phases are set by 31 U.S.C. §§1551–1557:

  1. Unexpired: from the BPOA through the EPOA. New obligations are allowed.
  2. Expired: the 5 fiscal years after the EPOA. No new obligations are allowed. Agencies can only pay out existing obligations and make upward or downward adjustments within the original purpose.
  3. Canceled/closed: on September 30 of the 5th year after expiring, the TAS closes. Any remaining balance, obligated or not, goes back to Treasury. Later bills for old obligations are paid from current appropriations, capped at 1% of the current account (§1553(b)).

No-year (X) money never expires. An X account can only be closed under §1555, when the purpose has been carried out and nothing has been paid out of it for two full fiscal years.

4. What the reports show per TAS

Each TAS row in the SF-133 and GTAS reports carries:

  • the unobligated balance brought forward on October 1, which is the carryover from earlier years
  • recoveries of prior-year obligations, which are deobligated money coming back into the account
  • new budget authority
  • obligations incurred
  • the unobligated balance at the end of the period, split into unexpired (still usable) and expired (can only cover adjustments)
  • outlays

Behind those figures, the USSGL ledger keeps expired authority in separate accounts from unexpired. That separation is what keeps an agency from obligating expired money by accident.

5. Where to get the data

  • SF-133 files on OMB's MAX portal, with one row per TAS, including BPOA, EPOA and the X code.
  • USAspending.gov, at three levels:
  • File A: account balances per TAS, taken from GTAS.
  • File B: the same money broken out by program activity and object class.
  • File C: individual awards tagged with their TAS.
  • The "federal account" views add up all the TAS rows for one account. Download at the "Treasury account" level if you need to keep the periods separate.
  • Disaster Emergency Fund Codes (DEFC) on USAspending. These tag supplemental money such as COVID relief and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which was mostly multi-year or no-year. You can follow those funds across fiscal years with them.

For analysis

To answer "how much of what Congress gave was spent," key on the full TAS, including BPOA and EPOA:

  • Compare budget authority with cumulative obligations and outlays across that TAS's whole life.
  • Avoid comparing one fiscal year's outlays with that year's appropriations. FY2026 outlays include money from FY2024/2026, FY2022/2026 and X accounts.
  • Account for canceled balances when the TAS closes. Unless an account is marked as canceled, money that went back to Treasury can look like it's still available.

Question 3. How is mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) estimated and tracked?

Corrections found when sourcing: the trust-fund depletion dates quoted from the 2025 Trustees Reports were superseded by the 2026 reports (OASI fourth quarter of 2032; OASDI third quarter of 2034; HI 2033). Other items: AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

Mandatory spending is not set by a yearly dollar amount. Permanent law sets who is eligible and how benefits are calculated, and the Treasury pays whatever those rules produce. So it is estimated by modelling how many people will qualify and how much each will be paid, and tracked by comparing actual payments with those projections and with trust fund balances. There is no appropriated ceiling to compare against.

Kind Examples How the money is provided
Trust-fund programs Social Security (OASI, DI), Medicare Part A (HI) Permanent, indefinite authority to pay from the trust fund. Spending is limited only by the fund's balance.
General-fund entitlements Medicare Parts B and D (SMI) Paid from the SMI trust fund, which receives premiums plus automatic general-fund transfers (most of its income).
"Appropriated entitlements" Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, VA disability compensation They pass through the annual appropriations bills, but the law sets the amount. Appropriators must provide "such sums as necessary," and money is added later if estimates fall short.
Net interest Interest on Treasury debt Permanent indefinite appropriation (31 U.S.C. §1305)

2. How spending is estimated

Basic method: projected enrolment × average benefit, with each part modelled separately.

  • Number of people (caseload): population projections (births, deaths, immigration), disability rates, how many eligible people actually sign up, and retirement ages.
  • Benefit per person: wage indexing (the Average Wage Index), the yearly cost-of-living adjustment (tied to CPI-W), and benefit formulas. For Medicare and Medicaid, health care prices and how much care people use.
  • Economic assumptions: inflation, wages, unemployment and interest rates. These come from the CBO and OMB economic forecasts.

Who produces the estimates:

  • CBO baseline. Usually published January or February in The Budget and Economic Outlook, with later updates. It covers 10 years under current law. Under the rules in BBEDCA §257, most expiring mandatory programs over $50M (such as SNAP) are assumed to continue. CBO publishes per-program baseline spreadsheets.
  • OMB current-services baseline. Published with the President's Budget and updated in the Mid-Session Review.
  • Agency actuaries. SSA's Office of the Chief Actuary and CMS's Office of the Actuary produce detailed program models.
  • Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports. Published every year with 75-year projections, including the dates the trust funds run out. The 2025 reports projected:
  • OASI depleted in 2033
  • combined OASDI in 2034
  • Medicare HI in 2033

Check for a 2026 report; these dates move by a year or so between editions.

3. Scoring and enforcement of law changes

  • CBO cost estimates. Any bill that changes mandatory programs is scored as a change from the baseline.
  • Statutory PAYGO (2010 Act). OMB keeps a scorecard of mandatory and revenue changes. A net cost at year-end triggers a sequester of non-exempt mandatory programs. Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP and most low-income programs are exempt, and Medicare cuts are capped at 4%. Congress usually wipes the scorecard clean, so in practice the sequester seldom takes effect.
  • Separate Medicare cut. A 2% sequester of Medicare provider payments has run continuously since 2013 under the Budget Control Act and its extensions.
  • What happens if a trust fund runs out. The trust fund is the only legal source of payment, and the Antideficiency Act bars paying more than the fund holds. Benefits would then automatically drop to what incoming revenue covers, roughly 77–81% for Social Security. No law tells the government to borrow the difference.

4. How actual spending is tracked

The accounting is the same TAS system as discretionary money, and almost everything is no-year (the X availability code):

Program Main TAS
OASI trust fund 028 X 8006
DI trust fund 028 X 8007
HI trust fund 075 X 8005
SMI trust fund 075 X 8004

Main accounts numbered 8000–8999 are trust funds. Money moves from the trust funds into benefit-payment and administrative accounts. The SF-133, GTAS and USAspending File A reports cover them like any other account.

Ongoing comparison of actual spending with estimates:

  • Monthly Treasury Statement. Outlays by program each month, including trust fund receipts and outlays and their balances.
  • CBO Monthly Budget Review. Compares year-to-date outlays by major program with the previous year and with CBO's projections.
  • Trust fund balances. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service tracks holdings of special-issue Treasury securities. These appear in the intragovernmental holdings tables of the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt and in the Treasury Bulletin.
  • Program data:
  • SSA Monthly Statistical Snapshot (beneficiaries and average benefits)
  • CMS enrolment files
  • CMS-64, quarterly state Medicaid expenditure reports
  • USDA FNS monthly SNAP data
  • Forecast-accuracy reviews. CBO's annual review of its projection errors, and OMB's comparison of actual results with its estimates.
  • Improper payments. Reported on paymentaccuracy.gov. Medicare fee-for-service and Medicaid together account for a large share of the government-wide total.
  • Long-term obligations. The Financial Report of the U.S. Government includes a Statement of Social Insurance: the present value of 75 years of projected benefits minus projected income. These obligations are not recorded as liabilities on the balance sheet.

For govspends

The useful comparisons for mandatory programs are:

  • actual vs. baseline: MTS outlays against CBO's projections, by program
  • trust fund income vs. outgo, and the remaining balance: Trustees Reports plus Fiscal Service data
  • payments vs. payments that should have been made: improper payment rates

Machine-readable sources:

  • Fiscal Data API (MTS tables)
  • CBO's baseline and historical-data spreadsheets
  • OMB Historical Tables. Table 8.5 gives mandatory outlays by program, and Table 11.3 gives payments for individuals.
  • Trustees Report supplementary tables, from SSA and CMS

Question 4. Are Medicare Parts B and D self-funded by premiums collected?

Corrections found when sourcing: the Part D shares given here (about 74% general revenue, 15% premiums) were wrong for 2025; the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report gives about 81% general revenue, 8% premiums and 10% state payments (corrected already in the answer to Question 6). Other items: AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

No. Premiums pay for only about a quarter of Parts B and D. Most of the money comes automatically from general federal revenue, which means income taxes and borrowing, not any dedicated tax.

How each part is financed (approximate shares, per recent Trustees Reports)

Source Part B (doctors, outpatient) Part D (prescription drugs)
Enrollee premiums ~25% ~15%
General revenue ~73% ~74%
State payments ("clawback") — ~11%
Other (interest, etc.) ~2% small

Part B - The law sets the standard premium at 25% of expected costs for an average aged enrollee. For 2026 it is $202.90 a month. - Higher-income enrollees pay an income-related surcharge (IRMAA). Their total premium covers 35% to 85% of the cost instead of 25%. - A "hold harmless" rule stops most Social Security recipients' Part B increase from exceeding their cost-of-living raise in dollars. Others make up the difference. - For many low-income enrollees, the "premium" is actually paid by Medicaid through the Medicare Savings Programs. So part of the premium line is really state and federal Medicaid money.

Part D - The base beneficiary premium is set at 25.5% of the cost of the standard benefit. Actual premiums vary by plan. - Low-income enrollees get "Extra Help," which general revenue pays for. - States pay the "clawback": a payment of roughly what they would have spent on drug coverage for people enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid. - The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act raised the government's share. It capped out-of-pocket costs ($2,000 in 2025, indexed after that) and capped base premium growth at 6% a year. A temporary premium-stabilization demonstration also lowered premiums for some plans.

Medicare Part A is the contrast. It is mostly funded by the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, which is why only Part A can actually run out of money.

Why the SMI trust fund can't run out

Each year, the law resets the general-revenue transfer to whatever is needed to cover projected Part B and Part D costs. So the SMI trust fund always stays solvent by design. The Trustees do not give it an exhaustion date. They report how large the general-revenue draw is getting instead.

The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act added a check. The Trustees must issue a "Medicare funding warning" if general revenue is projected to exceed 45% of total Medicare spending within 7 years. That warning has been issued almost every year since 2007. Each warning legally requires the President to propose a fix, and Congress has never acted on one.

How it's tracked

The general-revenue transfer is an "appropriated entitlement": a payment the law requires, but which runs through the yearly appropriations bills. It goes through the account Payments to the Health Care Trust Funds (075-0580) in the yearly Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

The money flows from the general fund through account 0580 into the SMI trust fund (075 X 8004), which then pays providers and plans. Account 0580 appears in SF-133 and MTS data like any other account. The SMI trust fund's income and outgo, split between Part B and Part D, are reported in the Trustees Report and Treasury's trust fund tables.

For govspends: the cleanest "who pays for Parts B and D" figure is SMI income by source from the Trustees Report: premiums vs. general revenue vs. state transfers. For a simple premium vs. general-revenue comparison, also note the share of "premiums" actually paid by Medicaid.

Question 5. Is Medicare Part A fully funded by the trust fund?

Corrections found when sourcing: the HI income shares given here were approximations from earlier reports; the 2026 report's CY2025 figures are in the report, Section 6. Other items: AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

Part A benefits are paid entirely from the Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund. But the trust fund's own income does not come entirely from payroll taxes, and it currently does not cover all of Part A's costs.

Where HI trust fund income comes from (approximate shares, recent Trustees Reports)

Source Share Notes
Medicare payroll tax ~88% 2.9% of all wages (1.45% from the employee and 1.45% from the employer), with no wage cap. Also the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200k for single filers or $250k for joint filers, added by the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
Income tax on Social Security benefits ~8% The tax on the slice of benefits taxable between 50% and 85% goes to HI. This was set up by a 1993 budget law.
Interest on trust fund holdings ~2–3% Paid as more Treasury special-issue securities.
Part A premiums ~1% Only from people who buy in because they lack 40 quarters of covered work. States pay these for some low-income enrollees.
General fund and other transfers small Reimbursements for a few specific populations, plus the HI share of some items.

A naming trap: the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax was sold as the "Medicare contribution tax," but it goes to the general fund, not to HI.

Where the "fully funded" claim breaks down

  1. Cash flow. HI has spent more than it takes in during several recent years, and the 2025 Trustees Report projects it will keep doing so. The gap is covered by redeeming the fund's Treasury securities. When those securities are redeemed, Treasury has to raise the cash from general revenue or borrowing. So the trust fund pays the bill on paper, but in economic terms the shortfall is financed the same way as the rest of the government.
  2. Depletion. The 2025 Trustees Report projects HI reserves will run out in 2033. After that, incoming revenue would cover roughly 89% of scheduled benefits. By law HI cannot get general revenue to make up the gap, so payments would be cut or delayed unless Congress acts.
  3. Long-range shortfall. Over 75 years, the gap is about 0.4% of taxable payroll. That roughly equals raising the 2.9% tax rate by about 0.4 percentage points starting now.

Why Part A differs from Parts B and D

  • Part A has dedicated tax income and no automatic general-revenue backstop. That is why it is the only part of Medicare with a depletion date.
  • Parts B and D get whatever general revenue they need each year, so they cannot run out. Their cost shows up as pressure on the general budget instead.

How to track it: the HI trust fund is account 075 X 8005. Its monthly income by source, outgo and balance are in the Monthly Treasury Statement's trust fund tables and in Fiscal Service trust fund reports. Annual detail and projections are in Trustees Report Table III.B.4 (HI operations), though the table number can shift between editions. Medicare Advantage payments are split between HI and SMI, so Part A spending in the reports includes the Part A share of Medicare Advantage payments.

Question 6. How much general revenue is used for Parts B and D?

Corrections found when sourcing: see AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

General revenue paid about $572 billion toward Medicare Parts B and D in calendar 2025, according to the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report (released June 9, 2026). That covered about 75% of their combined cost.

Total 2025 spending General revenue Share
Part B $584.3B $422.9B ~73%
Part D $181.5B $148.8B ~81%
Total ~$766B ~$572B ~75%

What else pays for them: - Part B: premiums cover about 26%. - Part D: enrollee premiums cover only about 8%, and states pay about 10% through the "clawback" for people on both Medicare and Medicaid.

Corrections to my earlier answer: - I put Part D at about 74% general revenue and 15% premiums. The 2026 report shows 81% and 8%. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act changes, mainly the out-of-pocket cap and the cap on premium growth, moved more of the cost onto general revenue. - The Part A depletion date is still 2033. The 2026 report puts it in the second quarter of 2033, one quarter earlier than the 2025 projection, which it attributes to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Scale: - $572B is about 1.9% of GDP. - It's roughly 8% of all federal outlays. That's my estimate, using FY2025 outlays of about $7.0T. The Trustees' figures are calendar-year, so the two don't line up exactly. - It's more than the general-revenue share of any other single program except interest on the debt. - Total Medicare spending was about $1.2T, so general revenue paid for roughly half of all Medicare spending. - The Trustees project the general-revenue draw for Parts B and D to rise from about 2.1% of GDP in 2026 to about 3.9% by 2100.

Funding warning: this draw is why the Trustees issued another "Medicare funding warning," the one triggered when general revenue is projected to exceed 45% of total Medicare spending. One analysis counts this as the 10th straight year.

For govspends: the Trustees' numbers are calendar-year. Treasury's are fiscal-year. That's the yearly outlays of account 075-0580 (Payments to the Health Care Trust Funds) in the Monthly Treasury Statement or SF-133. The two will differ by a few percent because of timing. If you put them side by side, label which year basis each uses.

Sources cited in the answer: 2026 Medicare Trustees Report (CMS, https://www.cms.gov/oact/tr/2026); Boston College Center for Retirement Research, "Medicare Finances: A Perspective on the 2026 Trustees Report"; Georgetown CHIR, "Beyond Insolvency"; Bipartisan Policy Center, "What's in the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report?"; CRS R43122.

Question 7. What is the funding situation for OASI and DI?

Corrections found when sourcing: see AUDIT_SUMMARY.md Section 4.

Both programs are paid almost entirely from their own payroll taxes. The retirement fund (OASI) is running out of reserves. The disability fund (DI) is healthy. These figures are from the 2026 Trustees Report, released June 9, 2026.

2025: where the money came from and where it went (OASI and DI combined)

$ billions Share
Payroll tax (12.4% on wages up to the taxable maximum, $184,500 in 2026) 1,323 91.3%
Income tax on Social Security benefits 58 4.0%
Interest on trust fund holdings 69 4.8%
Total income 1,449
Total cost (99.2% benefits, the rest administration) 1,610
Shortfall covered from reserves −160
Reserves at end of 2025 2,561 down from a $2.91T peak in 2020
  • Since 2010: costs have been higher than tax income (everything except interest).
  • Since 2021: costs have been higher than total income including interest, so reserves are now shrinking.
  • 2026 projection: a further drop of about $204B, leaving about $2.36T.

The two funds separately

OASI (retirement and survivors) DI (disability)
Share of the 12.4% payroll tax 10.6% 1.8%
Reserves run out Q4 2032, one quarter earlier than last year's report Not within 75 years
Benefits payable after that 78% 100%
Trustees' adequacy tests Fails both the 10-year and 75-year tests Passes both

DI's position has improved a lot since about 2010, when disability applications and awards began a long decline. It was close to running out in 2016, until Congress temporarily shifted payroll tax from OASI to DI.

Combined OASI and DI: reserves would run out in Q3 2034, the same date as last year's report. At that point income would cover 83% of benefits, falling to 65% by 2100. Combining the funds is only hypothetical: OASI and DI are legally separate, and DI's reserves can't be used for OASI benefits. Congress would have to pass a law shifting money between them. It has done this before, in 1994 and 2015, so the combined date is the one most people quote.

Long-range outlook got noticeably worse

The 75-year shortfall rose from 3.82% to 4.42% of taxable payroll, the biggest one-year jump since 1994. In today's dollars that is a $29.3T shortfall over 75 years. The causes:

Cause Effect (percentage points of payroll)
Moving the 75-year window forward one year +0.07
Lower assumed birth rate (1.90 → 1.75 children per woman) +0.35
Lower assumed immigration +0.21
One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) +0.16

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut income tax rates and expanded deductions. Less income tax on Social Security benefits means less money credited back to the trust funds.

Size of the fix needed:

Starting now (2026) Starting at depletion (2034)
Payroll tax increase +4.25 points (12.4% → about 16.65%) +4.90 points
Cut to all scheduled benefits 25.2% 28.5%

How this fits the earlier answers

  • Like Medicare Part A, unlike Parts B and D: Social Security has no automatic general-revenue backstop. When a fund runs out, the law limits payments to incoming income, so cuts would happen automatically.
  • Same caveat as Part A: spending down the reserves means redeeming special-issue Treasury securities. Treasury has to fund those redemptions from general revenue or borrowing, so the $160B shortfall adds to federal borrowing even though on paper the trust funds cover it.
  • Corrections to my earlier answer: I gave OASI 2033 and OASDI 2034 from the 2025 report. The 2026 report has OASI at 2032 and OASDI unchanged at 2034.

Tracking: the trust funds are accounts 028 X 8006 (OASI) and 028 X 8007 (DI). Monthly income, outgo and balances by fund are in the Monthly Treasury Statement trust fund tables and the Fiscal Service trust fund reports. The Trustees Report figures are calendar-year; Treasury's are fiscal-year.

Sources cited in the answer: CRS IF13256, "Social Security: Selected Findings of the 2026 Annual Report" (saved as sources/official/crs/IF13256_v2_2026-06-25.pdf); 2026 OASDI Trustees Report (SSA); SSA press release, June 9, 2026; Briefing Book, "Quick hits: The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report"; NCPSSM; Bipartisan Policy Center.