The Paying-In Generation

The Paying-In Generation

LodiEye — April 2026

LodiEye Staff · Investigative Analysis

An aging America needs workers. The fastest-growing source of them is being sharply reduced — while federal debt service squeezes the budget from the other side, and the trust funds that support retirees depend on the outcome.

Summary

The United States now runs three demographic and fiscal clocks simultaneously: an aging population entering retirement at the fastest rate in the nation's history; a working-age population that has depended almost entirely on immigration for growth since 2019; and a federal debt service bill that is the fastest-growing line item in the budget and projected to more than double by 2036.

Current administration policies have contracted the second lever while enlarging the third — a combination that nonpartisan fiscal forecasters, including the Social Security Administration's own actuaries, project will accelerate the depletion of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. This report documents what the underlying data shows, using primary sources from the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security trustees, the Federal Reserve research banks, Penn Wharton, the Peterson Institute, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and ideologically varied policy research institutions.

The United States is running three demographic and fiscal clocks at once, and they no longer tell the same time. One counts an aging population into retirement — the 4.1 million Americans turning 65 each year during the “Peak 65” window of 2024 through 2027, the largest retirement wave in the country's history. Another counts the working-age people paying into Social Security and Medicare to support them; for the past two years, that clock has been running almost entirely on immigration. A third clock — federal debt service — compounds the first two, consuming an ever-larger share of every federal dollar and shrinking the fiscal room to respond when the trust funds run short.

In 2024, net international migration contributed 2.8 million of the nation's 3.3 million population increase — 84 percent of all growth, according to U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2024 estimates. In 2024–25, immigration fell sharply as enforcement intensified, and national population growth dropped from 0.96 percent to 0.52 percent. Even at the reduced level, immigration still accounted for 71 percent of what growth remained, because natural increase — births minus deaths — is the lowest it has been in modern U.S. history.

That shift is not a matter of opinion. It is visible in the Census numbers, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll data, in the Social Security trustees' annual report, and in the Congressional Budget Office's long-term projections. What follows is what those documents show about where the U.S. workforce stands now, what immigrants and visa holders contribute to the programs they fund, what the current administration's policy trajectory means for the math going forward, and how the ballooning debt service bill compounds the pressure.

A Workforce That Doesn't Exist Without Immigration

Foreign-born workers made up 19.2 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2024, up from 18.6 percent in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — roughly 31.4 million people. They participate in the labor force at a higher rate than native-born workers (66.5 percent versus about 62 percent) because they skew heavily toward prime working age: 70.3 percent of foreign-born workers are 25 to 54, compared with 62.5 percent of native-born workers.

In the sectors where the U.S. faces the steepest projected labor gaps, that 19 percent national share climbs much higher. The Health Resources and Services Administration projects an overall shortage of 141,160 physicians by 2038, with shortages in 30 of 35 modeled specialties. The Conference Board projects shortfalls of roughly 187,000 physicians, 208,000 registered nurses, and 302,000 licensed practical nurses within the next decade. The Bipartisan Policy Center's September 2025 Burning Glass analysis identified healthcare and social assistance as the sector with both the most job openings and the highest shortage risk.

Foreign-born share of workers by sector

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Foreign-Born Labor Force Characteristics 2024; American Immigration Council “Map the Impact”; Council on Foreign Relations farm-labor data, FY 2021–22.

The composition matters beyond the top-line percentages. In health care alone, 15.6 percent of all nurses and 27.7 percent of all health aides are immigrants. In California, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, and Florida, more than one in four nurses is foreign-born. In Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, more than one in four physicians is foreign-born. In agriculture, 68 percent of farm laborers in fiscal year 2021–22 were foreign-born, per U.S. Department of Agriculture figures cited by the Council on Foreign Relations. In construction, the Associated Builders and Contractors estimate a shortage of about 500,000 workers in 2025 — and more than 40 percent of construction workers in California and Texas are foreign-born.

The underlying arithmetic is starker than the sector shares suggest. The National Foundation for American Policy, analyzing BLS Current Population Survey data, found that from 2019 through 2024, immigrant workers accounted for 88 percent of U.S. labor force growth. Over the last five years, only 479,000 U.S.-born workers were added to the labor force, compared with 3.6 million foreign-born workers. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's October 2025 analysis concluded that the monthly “breakeven” employment number — the jobs needed just to keep pace with population and labor force dynamics — has fallen from 150,000 in CBO's January 2024 projection to 52,000 in the 2034 projection, a drop driven almost entirely by aging and reduced immigration.

“Without immigration, the U.S. labor force would have declined over the past five years.” — National Foundation for American Policy, October 2024

The Contribution Ledger

The central claim that immigrants — including unauthorized immigrants — are a net fiscal drain on federal programs is not supported by the methodologies used by nonpartisan fiscal forecasters. It fails across ideologically varied sources that have examined the question using accepted accounting frameworks.

In February 2026, the Cato Institute — a libertarian policy institution — published an update to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's fiscal model covering 30 years of federal, state, and local budget data. The finding: every year from 1994 through 2023, the U.S. immigrant population paid more in taxes than it received in benefits from all levels of government. The cumulative fiscal surplus over that period was $14.5 trillion in 2024 dollars. Without immigration, the analysis found, the same period would have produced a $48 trillion deficit instead.

The Congressional Budget Office's July 2024 analysis of the 2021–2024 immigration surge projected that it would add $1.2 trillion to federal revenues and $0.3 trillion to mandatory outlays over the 2024–2034 period, producing a net $0.9 trillion reduction in federal deficits and $8.9 trillion in additional nominal GDP. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Americans for Tax Fairness, analyzing 2022 tax data, found that 10.9 million undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes that year — including $19.5 billion in federal income taxes, $32.3 billion in federal payroll taxes, and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes. In 40 of 50 states, undocumented immigrants paid a higher effective state and local tax rate than the top 1 percent of households.

What unauthorized immigrants pay vs. what they receive (2022)

Sources: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants (2024 update); Americans for Tax Fairness analysis; Social Security Administration Office of the Chief Actuary; Penn Wharton Budget Model 2025; CMS emergency Medicaid data, 2018. Undocumented immigrants are statutorily ineligible for Social Security retirement, Medicare, non-emergency Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The mechanism behind the gap is demographic and statutory. Immigrants skew younger than the U.S.-born population — 77 percent are working age, compared with about 61 percent of U.S.-born residents — which means their contributions to payroll-funded programs dwarf their withdrawals. A 2013 Harvard/CUNY study found that unauthorized immigrants alone generated a $35.1 billion surplus to the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund from 2000 to 2011. More recent New American Economy / American Immigration Council analysis found that between 2012 and 2018, immigrants contributed $51 billion more in Medicare taxes than they used in Medicare-covered services, with non-citizen immigrants contributing nearly $75 billion more than they used. In the same period, U.S.-born residents used $98 billion more than they contributed.

On Social Security, the Bipartisan Policy Center reports that unauthorized immigrants contributed $25.7 billion in payroll taxes in 2022 while being legally ineligible to claim Social Security benefits. Penn Wharton's June 2025 modeling puts the 2024 figure at roughly $24 billion. The Social Security trustees' rule of thumb: every 100,000 in annual net immigration improves the program's actuarial balance by 0.1 percent of taxable payroll, and the 75-year balance varies by 0.78 percentage points across the trustees' low, intermediate, and high immigration assumptions — nearly a quarter of the program's entire long-term shortfall.

For legal visa holders, the asymmetry is different but often points the same direction. H-1B workers pay full FICA from day one unless covered by one of 17 Totalization Agreements, which do not include India or China — the top sending countries for the program. The visa is capped at six years. Social Security eligibility requires 40 credits, or ten years of qualifying work. In practice, that means a substantial share of H-1B holders pay into the trust funds for years without ever qualifying to draw from them, unless they transition to permanent residency.

What unauthorized immigrants cannot receive

• Social Security retirement, survivors, or disability benefits
• Medicare Parts A, B, C, or D
• Non-emergency Medicaid (except emergency services, $2.6B in 2018, or 0.4% of total Medicaid spending)
• SNAP food assistance
• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
• The Earned Income Tax Credit or federal Child Tax Credit in most cases
• Federal student aid, most federal housing programs

The Trust Fund Clock Is Already Moving

The Social Security and Medicare trust funds are the clearest instrument for measuring what the immigration numbers mean in dollars. The 2025 trustees' report, released in June, moved the depletion date for the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASDI) reserves to 2034 — one year earlier than projected in 2024. The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is now projected to deplete in 2033, three years earlier than the prior report.

At depletion, current law requires Social Security to reduce outlays to match incoming payroll tax revenue. The trustees estimate that produces an immediate benefit cut of 19 percent across the board for every retiree, survivor, and disabled beneficiary. The gap widens thereafter, reaching 28 percent by 2099. Restoring 75-year solvency today would require a 29 percent payroll tax increase or a 22 percent across-the-board benefit cut, per the trustees; waiting until 2034 raises those numbers to 34 percent and 26 percent.

Social Security trust fund: projected insolvency date

Sources: 2023, 2024, and 2025 OASDI Trustees' Reports; Penn Wharton Budget Model, June 2025; Tax Policy Center analysis of the 2025 budget act. The 2025 trustees' report incorporated the Social Security Fairness Act (signed January 2025), lower projected fertility, and revised payroll assumptions; Penn Wharton's permanent-deportation scenario and the 2025 budget law's drain on payroll revenue project a further forward shift.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, analyzing the 2025 report, attributed nearly half of the 0.32 percentage-point worsening in the 75-year shortfall to the Social Security Fairness Act signed in January 2025 — a law that increased benefits for roughly 2.8 million state and local retirees who had previously seen their Social Security reduced because of uncovered pension work. Lower projected fertility and revised compensation forecasts accounted for most of the rest.

Immigration enforcement adds a further drag the 2025 report did not fully incorporate. The Tax Policy Center, analyzing the 2025 budget law and current enforcement trajectory, projected that policy changes together could drain nearly $170 billion from the Social Security trust fund between 2025 and 2034 — enough to advance the OASI fund's insolvency to 2032. Penn Wharton's June 2025 permanent-deportation scenario estimated that replacing the lost revenue would require collecting an additional $180 per year from the median U.S. household in 2025, growing 3.5 percent annually thereafter.

The Debt Service Squeeze

The trust funds are not running short in isolation. They are running short inside a federal balance sheet whose interest bill is growing faster than any other category of spending — and the policies that push the trust fund depletion dates forward are the same policies driving the debt curve steeper. The two clocks feed each other.

Federal interest costs totaled $970 billion in fiscal year 2025, per the U.S. Department of the Treasury's September 2025 Monthly Treasury Statement — equivalent to 19 percent of all federal revenue collections and roughly $7,300 per household. In the Congressional Budget Office's February 2026 Budget and Economic Outlook, net interest crosses the $1 trillion threshold for the first time in FY 2026 and reaches $2.1 trillion by FY 2036. As a share of GDP, interest costs rise from 3.2 percent in 2025 to 4.6 percent by 2036 — eclipsing the 1991 record (3.2 percent) already and headed to levels without post-WWII precedent.

Federal interest costs on the national debt

Sources: U.S. Treasury Monthly Treasury Statement, FY 2025; Congressional Budget Office, Budget and Economic Outlook 2026–2036, February 2026; Peter G. Peterson Foundation Monthly Interest Tracker, April 2026; Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Trillion-Dollar Interest Payments Are the New Norm,” December 2025.

Interest is already the third-largest line item in the federal budget, trailing only Social Security and Medicare. In the first six months of FY 2026 — October 2025 through March 2026 — the government paid $529 billion in interest, more than $88 billion per month, roughly equal to combined Department of Defense military and Department of Education spending for the same period. The American Action Forum projects that interest will exceed Medicare spending by FY 2028, all discretionary spending by FY 2038, and become the single largest federal expenditure by FY 2048. Over FY 2026–2036, net interest is projected to grow 106 percent, outpacing Medicare (85 percent), Social Security (65 percent), and every other major budget category.

The underlying debt load is the reason. The CBO's February 2026 baseline projects debt held by the public rising from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent by 2036, surpassing the previous post-World War II peak of 106 percent (set in 1946) by 2030. The 30-year outlook puts debt at 175 percent of GDP by 2056. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's Alternative Scenario — which assumes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's temporary tax cuts are made permanent and recent tariffs remain subject to legal challenge — puts debt at 134 percent of GDP by 2035 and interest costs at $2.2 trillion, more than 5 percent of GDP.

The largest single driver is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in July 2025. CBO estimated in September 2025 that the law will add $3.4 trillion to primary deficits and $718 billion in additional interest costs through 2034 — a total of $4.1 trillion added to the debt. The CBO's February 2026 baseline attributes roughly $4.7 trillion in deficit increase over 2026–2035 to OBBBA and related legislation, partially offset by approximately $3 trillion in projected tariff revenue — much of which is itself at risk after the February 20, 2026 Supreme Court ruling that parts of the president's tariff framework exceeded statutory authority. Penn Wharton projects that ruling could require up to $175 billion in tariff refunds, and CBO estimates that cumulative deficits over 2026–2036 would be approximately $2 trillion higher than baseline if tariff revenues are not replaced.

Every 1 percent of GDP added to debt raises Treasury interest rates by an estimated 2 basis points — and debt is projected to rise 19 percent of GDP over the next decade.

For the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, the debt dynamic adds a second squeeze on top of the demographic one. The mechanism is procedural but consequential: when the trust funds redeem their holdings of special-issue Treasury securities to pay benefits — as they have been doing since 2021 — the Treasury must produce cash to honor those redemptions. When the general fund is already running a deficit, the Treasury raises that cash by borrowing from the public, which adds to the debt and drives interest costs higher. Social Security Administration actuaries estimate that OBBBA's combined tax and benefit provisions will drain nearly $170 billion from Social Security's trust fund between 2025 and 2034, per Tax Policy Center analysis — enough to advance the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund's insolvency to 2032, one year earlier than the 2025 trustees' report projected before OBBBA's effects were fully incorporated.

The crowding-out effect is the larger structural problem. As interest costs consume an ever-larger share of federal revenue — CBO projects 26 percent of every federal dollar collected will service interest by 2036 — the fiscal space to address trust fund insolvency through general revenue shrinks. The Bipartisan Policy Center notes that funding full scheduled benefits through general revenue transfers, absent reform, would require $164 trillion in inflation-adjusted borrowing over the 75-year projection window — mathematically unavailable at current debt trajectories. Every additional dollar of debt service cost is a dollar not available for the tax cuts, benefit extensions, or transfer payments that would be required to keep the trust funds whole without payroll tax increases or benefit reductions.

The weak Treasury auction data from March 2026 suggests the market is beginning to price in these dynamics. Primary dealers absorbed 24 percent of a 2-year note auction late in March — roughly double their typical share — and 5- and 7-year auctions showed similar weakness, indicating softer demand for a growing supply of federal debt. CRFB's analysis of CBO's February 2026 baseline notes that the average interest rate paid on the national debt is projected to exceed the U.S. economic growth rate beginning in FY 2031 — the classical threshold at which debt dynamics become self-reinforcing absent major fiscal adjustment.

What the Administration Has Done

The policy actions taken since January 2025 can be documented without interpretation. What follows is a non-exhaustive chronological catalog of measures with direct bearing on the workforce, trust funds, and demographic levers above.

January 27, 2025

Refugee Admissions Program suspended. Refugee arrivals fell from 12,518 in December 2024 to 1,341 by March 2026, per Cato Institute tracking.

January 2025

Social Security Fairness Act signed. Increases benefits for roughly 2.8 million public-sector retirees. Identified by the 2025 trustees' report as the largest single driver of the worsened 75-year shortfall.

April 15, 2025

Presidential memorandum on Social Security Act benefits. Directs enforcement against grantees that do not verify eligibility and prioritizes actions to prevent ineligible aliens from receiving payments. Administration states more than 1,000 immigrants with criminal records or terrorism ties have been blocked.

Spring–Summer 2025

Temporary Protected Status rollbacks. Multiple country designations ended; House Republicans broke with the administration on Haitian TPS, citing healthcare workforce concerns.

July 2025

One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed. Mandates national Medicaid work and reporting requirements; CBO projects millions of eligible enrollees will lose coverage. Creates $1,000 “Trump Accounts” for newborns. Continues roughly $1 trillion in 10-year Medicaid reductions. Adds $4.1 trillion to the federal debt through 2034 (CBO). Social Security actuaries estimate the bill drains $170 billion from the trust fund through 2034.

September 21, 2025

H-1B entry restriction proclamation. $100,000 per-petition fee imposed on new H-1B applications for workers outside the U.S. — up from the previous $2,000–$5,000 range. Effective for 12 months absent extension. Launched alongside the “Trump Gold Card” $1 million investor residency pathway.

October 2025

IVF access executive order. White House announces TrumpRx discount program for IVF drugs. U.S. Department of Labor separately warns that enforcement policy risks creating agricultural labor shortages.

December 23, 2025

DHS weighted H-1B selection rule finalized. Replaces random lottery with wage-based ranking, favoring higher-paid positions. Effective February 27, 2026 for the FY 2027 cap registration.

February 20, 2026

Supreme Court tariff ruling. Court finds the International Economic Emergency Powers Act did not grant the authorities used for 2025 tariff framework. Penn Wharton projects up to $175 billion in refunds; CBO estimates $2 trillion in additional cumulative deficits through 2036 if tariff revenues are not replaced.

Ongoing through 2025–26

Deportation enforcement expansion and SSA staffing cuts via DOGE. BLS data shows the foreign-born workforce declined by more than one million between January and August 2025. Trump's FY 2027 budget flat-funds SSA below the commissioner's request.

Some of these actions target problems with genuine evidentiary support. H-1B abuse — particularly through IT outsourcing firms — has been documented in peer-reviewed research and federal whistleblower cases. A 2024 peer-reviewed study of Big 4 accounting firm payroll data found H-1B new hires received starting salaries approximately 10 percent lower than matched U.S. citizen hires. The Economic Policy Institute's 2021 investigation of HCL Technologies documented apparent underpayment of at least $95 million to H-1B workers placed at major U.S. corporations. The 2015 Southern California Edison case — in which American workers trained their H-1B replacements — is a documented event. The structural critique of the random lottery is shared across ideologically varied institutions, including the Heritage Foundation and the Economic Policy Institute.

The broader claim that H-1B workers aggregately suppress wages or displace American workers across the high-skill labor market is less well-supported. The Mercatus Center — a libertarian research institution — reviewed the academic literature and concluded that most research finds H-1B workers do not lower wages for American workers and do not cause an overall decrease in American jobs. An influential Kerr and Lincoln study found that H-1B admissions increased U.S. patenting and invention without displacing American workers. The honest synthesis is that the abuse problem is real at the outsourcing-firm level; the aggregate displacement claim is not.

What the Forecasters Project

The question of what the next decade produces is not a matter of guesswork. The institutions paid to model these outcomes — CBO, the Social Security trustees, the Federal Reserve research banks, the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Peterson Institute, the National Foundation for American Policy — have updated their projections to incorporate current policy. The direction is consistent across sources.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, in an October 2025 analysis, attributed between 40 and 60 percent of the 2024–2025 decline in U.S. nonfarm employment growth to slower net migration. Median real wage growth halved over the same period, including for lower-wage workers who might otherwise have been expected to benefit from reduced labor competition. The share of workers who are employed declined; the share out of the labor force entirely increased.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated in 2024 that deporting between 1.3 and 8.3 million undocumented immigrants would reduce U.S. real GDP by up to 7 percent by 2028. The National Foundation for American Policy projects that the administration's current policy trajectory could reduce annual economic growth by almost one-third by 2035 and cut legal immigration by 33 to 50 percent over Trump's term. The Council on Foreign Relations documented that the foreign-born workforce declined by more than one million between January and August 2025.

The Social Security Administration's own actuaries are now incorporating the immigration slowdown into their depletion-date revisions. CBO's September 2025 demographic outlook projected a Social Security area population in 2035 that is 7 million smaller than projected in January 2025, a 1.9 percent reduction, largely driven by revised immigration assumptions. Penn Wharton's modeling shows that all deportation scenarios reduce Social Security income and accelerate trust fund depletion; the permanent scenario produces a 0.25 percent-of-payroll decline in the program's long-term balance.

The Social Security trustees, CBO, Federal Reserve research banks, Penn Wharton, and Cato all converge on the same direction: lower immigration accelerates trust fund insolvency and slows economic growth.

On the fertility side, the administration's pronatalist tools have not been paired with the affordability structure that international evidence associates with higher birth rates. The Institute for Family Studies — a pronatalist-aligned organization — estimates that an expanded Child Tax Credit could plausibly boost fertility by 3 to 10 percent. But Medicaid covers more than 4 in 10 U.S. births, and the Medicaid work requirements and reductions enacted in the 2025 budget law run in the opposite direction. SNAP restrictions, Head Start funding pressure, and housing costs all weigh against the affordability problem that demographic surveys consistently identify as the main reason Americans have fewer children than they say they want. Even a successful fertility intervention operates on a 20-year lag before those children become taxpayers. It cannot substitute for near-term immigration or direct trust fund reform.

The Projected Forward State

If current policies hold, several outcomes are not matters of speculation but of arithmetic playing out against demographic mass already in motion:

What the models indicate through 2035

• Labor force: Net migration of roughly 1 million in 2025, down 1.6 million from 2024 (San Francisco Fed, July 2025). Foreign-born workforce declined more than 1 million January–August 2025. Monthly breakeven employment growth projected to fall to 52,000 jobs by 2034 (Kansas City Fed).
• Trust funds: Combined OASDI insolvency projected for 2034, one year earlier than 2024 projections; Medicare HI for 2033, three years earlier. The 2025 budget law alone drains $170 billion from OASI through 2034, advancing that fund's insolvency to 2032 per Tax Policy Center analysis.
• Debt and debt service: Debt held by the public rises from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent by 2036 (CBO February 2026), surpassing the post-WWII record by 2030. Net interest crosses $1 trillion in FY 2026 and reaches $2.1 trillion by 2036 — growing 106 percent, faster than any other budget category. Average interest rate on federal debt projected to exceed GDP growth rate starting FY 2031.
• GDP: Peterson Institute projects up to 7 percent real GDP reduction by 2028 under broad deportation scenarios. NFAP projects roughly one-third reduction in annual growth by 2035.
• Sectoral pressure: Agriculture shortages flagged by the U.S. Department of Labor in October 2025. Construction faces an estimated 500,000-worker shortfall in 2025. Healthcare projected to face shortfalls of 187,000 physicians, 208,000 RNs, and 302,000 LPNs within a decade.
• Demographics: By 2040, immigration projected to be the sole driver of U.S. population growth (Bipartisan Policy Center). Median age projected to reach roughly 40 by 2030; the 65-and-over population projected at 71.6 million by 2030, or 20.7 percent of the population (S&P Global).

None of these projections assume any individual scenario — mass deportation, total border closure, or total reversal of current policy. They reflect the trajectory of policies already enacted or announced, modeled by institutions whose methodologies are accepted by both parties when the results are politically convenient.

The Bottom Line

The United States has a Social Security and Medicare system built for a demographic shape it no longer has. Fertility has been below replacement since the early 1970s; the Baby Boom retirement wave is at its peak; and immigration has quietly subsidized both trust funds for decades by bringing in younger workers who pay in at full rates but, in large numbers, will never collect.

The current administration has engaged each of the available demographic policy levers — immigration, fertility, trust fund governance — in directions the nonpartisan forecasters project will accelerate rather than address the underlying math. At the same time, its signature 2025 budget law added more than $4 trillion to projected deficits through 2034, directly drained approximately $170 billion from the Social Security trust fund, and pushed federal interest costs past $1 trillion on a trajectory toward $2.1 trillion by 2036 — the fastest-growing line item in the federal budget. The debt dynamic and the trust fund dynamic are not separate problems: every dollar of additional interest cost is a dollar unavailable for the general-revenue transfers, payroll tax reforms, or benefit adjustments that would be required to keep the programs whole.

That is not an interpretation. It is what the 2025 Social Security trustees' report, the CBO February 2026 Budget and Economic Outlook, the Federal Reserve research, the Peterson Institute modeling, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's baseline analysis, and the libertarian-aligned Cato Institute fiscal analysis all say, using their own preferred methodologies.

Some of the administration's stated concerns — H-1B abuse, enforcement of existing law, fertility decline — have genuine evidentiary support. The solution mix chosen does not match those concerns. A workforce cannot be built by removing workers. A trust fund cannot be saved by accelerating the departure of its contributors and simultaneously enlarging the debt service claim on the same general revenue. And a birth rate cannot be raised by cutting the programs that cover 40 percent of births.

About This Report: AI-Assisted Research and Analysis

This LodiEye investigative analysis was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and editorial review of Lodi411's human editor. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:

Source Discovery: AI-assisted search and retrieval identified primary sources from the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration's 2025 Annual Trustees' Report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Foreign-Born Labor Force Characteristics 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2024 and 2025 Population Estimates, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statements, the Federal Reserve research banks (Minneapolis, Kansas City, San Francisco), the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the Cato Institute, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Foundation for American Policy, and the American Immigration Council, among others. Real-time searches identified the February 2026 CBO Budget and Economic Outlook, the April 2026 Peter G. Peterson Foundation interest tracker, and recent April 2026 CRFB baseline updates.

Credibility Validation: Claims were cross-referenced across multiple independent sources spanning the ideological spectrum — libertarian-aligned (Cato Institute, Mercatus Center), center-right (American Action Forum, Heritage Foundation), center (CBO, SSA trustees, Federal Reserve), and center-left (Economic Policy Institute, American Immigration Council) — to ensure that key data points reflect convergent rather than partisan findings. Claims that failed cross-source verification, including the FAIR $150–182 billion “net fiscal burden” estimate, were excluded from the analysis rather than presented with false balance, because that methodology is not accepted by nonpartisan fiscal forecasters using the National Academies of Sciences accounting framework.

Analysis and Synthesis: Claude Opus assisted in organizing the three-clock analytical framework (aging population, working-age contributors, debt service) used to structure the article; in synthesizing the fiscal arithmetic connecting immigration levels, trust fund actuarial balances, and the debt service crowding-out mechanism; and in identifying the consistent directional findings across the institutional forecasters. The distinction between H-1B abuse (which has documented evidentiary support) and aggregate displacement claims (which do not) was developed through systematic review of the academic literature and peer-reviewed studies.

Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting, structuring, and formatting the report for clarity and readability, including the four Kendo UI data visualizations (foreign-born workforce share by sector, unauthorized immigrant contributions vs. receipts, Social Security trust fund insolvency trajectory, and federal interest cost trajectory), the chronological policy action catalog, and the bottom-line summary structure.

Final Review: Multiple AI models reviewed the completed draft for factual consistency, source attribution accuracy, logical coherence, and balanced presentation. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions were made by Lodi411's human editor.

Lodi411/LodiEye believes transparency about AI use in journalism serves both readers and the profession. We use multiple AI platforms — including Anthropic's Claude (Opus and Sonnet) and Perplexity AI — as research, analysis, and presentation tools, not as autonomous authors. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions are made by Lodi411's human editor, who directs and reviews all AI-assisted work.

References

• U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates (December 2024)
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Foreign-Born Labor Force Characteristics 2024 (May 2025)
• Social Security Administration, 2025 Annual Trustees' Report (June 2025)
• Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook 2026 to 2036 (February 2026)
• Congressional Budget Office, The Demographic Outlook 2026 to 2056 (September 2025)
• Congressional Budget Office, Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and Economy (July 2024)
• Penn Wharton Budget Model, The Impact of President Trump's Deportation Policies: The Social Security Program (June 2025)
• Cato Institute, Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023 (February 2026)
• Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants (2024 update)
• Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Analysis of the 2025 Social Security Trustees' Report (June 2025)
• Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trillion-Dollar Interest Payments Are the New Norm (December 2025)
• Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Monthly Interest Tracker — National Debt (April 2026)
• American Action Forum, Sizing Up Interest Payments on the National Debt (November 2025)
• Economic Policy Innovation Center, Interest Spending Tracker: Q1 of FY 2026 (January 2026)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Immigration Can't Explain Declining Employment Growth (October 2025)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Declining Immigration, Aging Population Reducing Breakeven Employment Growth (October 2025)
• Health Resources and Services Administration, Health Workforce Projections (December 2025)
• Bipartisan Policy Center, The Effect of Immigration on Social Security's Finances (October 2025)
• Bipartisan Policy Center, Why Immigration Policy Matters for the National Debt (December 2025)
• National Foundation for American Policy, Immigrants and America's Labor Force Growth (October 2024)
• American Immigration Council, How Immigrants Subsidize Medicare for All U.S. Seniors (March 2025)
• Presidential Proclamation: Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers (September 19, 2025)
• USCIS, DHS Changes Process for Awarding H-1B Work Visas (December 23, 2025)
• Tax Policy Center, How The 2025 Budget Act Accelerates Social Security's Insolvency (August 2025)

LodiEye is the investigative reporting arm of Lodi411, an independent civic data and journalism platform serving Lodi, California and San Joaquin County. Corrections and feedback: editor@lodi411.com. This article draws on public records and published analysis from the sources listed above; any claim not attributed to a specific source is drawn from primary government data.