By Ashley Fredde
The gears of government are turning slower by the day with a gridlocked U.S. Congress, and they’re threatening to seize altogether as another shutdown looms.
For North Carolina’s older adults — many enduring the slow grind of aging bodies and shrinking budgets — the prospect feels all too familiar.
Last week, advocates at the North Carolina Coalition on Aging’s annual luncheon warned that even brief disruptions in government services could ripple through the lives of older North Carolinians.
Delays in processing new claims, disruptions to food and housing assistance, and cuts to community programs could hit seniors hardest in a state where nearly one in five residents is over 65. Social Security checks will still go out, but recipients’ access to those funds could be affected in other ways.
“If the government shuts down, any kind of transaction you’re going to have to make with Social Security is going to be more difficult — and maybe impossible — until the government reopens,” Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare told the coalition during his keynote speech.
“The administration has eliminated jobs in Social Security. Over 7,000 people were let go, and there were already fewer people in decades running and administering the Social Security program,” he continued. “If there’s a shutdown, it’s going to make it more difficult to get help.”
The shutdown could also delay the annual cost-of-living adjustment announcement by the Social Security Administration. The cost-of-living adjustment is tied directly to the Consumer Price Index report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which would stop operation during a shutdown.
The delay would leave retirees and others dependent on Social Security unsure of the change in their income until later in the year, Axios reported.
Lawmakers are deeply divided over federal spending and the national debt, which leaves vital programs in limbo. Democrats have demanded an extension for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which will expire in a matter of months if Congress fails to act.
The additional subsidies, originally enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, have expanded coverage for millions of middle- to low-income people. If a shutdown or further federal cuts occur, nearly 450,000 North Carolinians could lose their health insurance or see the financial support that makes it affordable disappear.
Additionally, proposed cuts of about $300 billion dollars to SNAP passed by Congress in July in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill would put an estimated 375,000 North Carolinians at risk of losing some or all of their food assistance, according to NC Budget and Tax Center.
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The layers of impacts could intensify an already precarious situation for the state’s aging population, according to AARP.
In 2020, North Carolina had the 14th-highest rate of older adult food insecurity in the U.S. at 7.7 percent. The annual costs of disease-associated malnutrition for adults age 65 and older in the state is $140,348,592, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in a handout.
That same handout indicated that 81 percent of older adults were managing a chronic condition in the U.S., with 54 percent managing two or more in 2022. Thirty-four percent reported living with a disability.
Social Security has long been a safety net, but even that could be at risk, Richtman warned.
“For 90 years this program has been around lifting people out of poverty, lifting more people out of poverty than all other federal programs combined,” he said.
“Even though this big, ugly bill did not directly affect Social Security, we need to worry about that,” he said. “This is laying the groundwork that we can’t afford Social Security at the level that it is currently providing benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, because of all this money we have spent on tax cuts.”
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