Five decades of Social Security budget authority.
The Social Security Administration's budget authority, FY1976– FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables — read in the two rows OMB itself keeps separate: the off-budget OASDI trust funds and the on-budgetremainder (SSI plus the agency's administration). The line predates the 1995 elevation of SSA to an independent agency, and it climbs steeply with the baby-boom retirement wave and annual cost-of-living adjustments — almost all of it off-budget.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB
All-time peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
SSA budget authority — the arc since 1976
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2 · off-/on-budgetReading the arc
The steep climb is almost entirely off-budget — the OASDI trust funds paying retirement and disability benefits to a wave of retiring beneficiaries, indexed each year for inflation. The on-budget strip at the base (SSI plus the Limitation on Administrative Expenses that runs the agency) grows far more slowly. That is exactly why an agency-level monitor keeps the two dialects separate: the same total can mean very different things depending on which side is moving, and the off-budget trust funds are excluded from the unified budget totals by law. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 does not publish a constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one.