1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

I am writing as your constituent to urge you to protect the earned retirement benefits of working Americans and reject any proposal to push workers toward delaying retirement to cover a federal funding shortfall. Under current law, Social Security payroll taxes only apply up to a fixed annual wage cap, set at $184,500 in 2026. A nurse or construction worker pays the tax on 100% of their income, all year long. The highest earners stop paying within the first few weeks of January. The Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary has found that applying the payroll tax to ultra-high incomes would close the vast majority of the program’s long-term funding gap for decades to come.  Instead, the administration has been pushing a different fix. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has repeatedly argued that Americans should work at least one more year before retiring, citing added GDP figures that have shifted from “$3 trillion” early in the year to “$1 trillion” in July, with no published CBO analysis behind either number. Per a June letter from Senators Warren, Duckworth, and Blumenthal, SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano has indicated that raising the retirement age itself is “under consideration.” This is not a fringe idea; it is an active discussion inside the administration, backed by shifting figures, aimed at working Americans instead of the tax cap sitting untouched above top earners.  This is not a partisan fight. In a joint New York Times op-ed, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio’s own Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican, called on Congress to lift the cap. As they noted, a middle-class nurse pays Social Security taxes on 100% of their paycheck, while a corporate lawyer pays it on only a small fraction. With the Social Security Trustees’ 2026 report projecting retirement trust fund depletion by the fourth quarter of 2032, Congress must act soon.  I urge you to: 1. Support legislation to scrap or lift the payroll tax cap and apply Social Security taxes equitably to high incomes. 2. Publicly oppose any statutory or de facto increase to the full retirement age. 3. Require any economic case for work-longer proposals, including Dr. Oz’s, to rest on published, independent analysis from nonpartisan agencies like the Congressional Budget Office. Fund Social Security by ensuring everyone pays at the same rate on all of their income, not by forcing working Americans to spend another year of their lives on the job to make up the difference.