CEO of America’s largest Social Security advisory firm: Trump’s big tax cut ‘did not help’

Seventy-year-old baby boomer Martha Shedden spent more than three decades building a successful career as a civil engineer. But 15 years ago, in 2011, she found a new set of numbers to obsess over: the fiercely complicated rules of the U.S. Social Security system. Today she serves as the president and cofounder of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts (NARSSA), the largest Social Security advisory services firm in the U.S., and she’s grappling with a problem: President Donald Trump’s handling of the nation’s finances.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act “did not help Social Security,” Shedden explained, agreeing with projections showing insolvency is drawing closer and closer as tax cuts keep bringing a reckoning nearer to the present day.

To be sure, she told Fortune, the demographic evidence facing the program is undeniably grim. The ratio of workers to beneficiaries has plummeted from 10 or more in the mid-20th century to merely two or three today. As a result, the timeline for the depletion of the program’s surplus trust funds has accelerated, shifting from 2035 to the end of 2032. After 2032, incoming payroll tax revenue, income from taxation of benefits, and interest on the trust funds will not cover 100% of promised benefits.