You can look it up (p. 465)
Editorial
USA Today
11/27/2012
Do Democrats really believe Social Security doesn’t contribute to federal deficits and the national debt? They’re certainly saying it a lot:
“Social Security does not add one penny to our debt, not a penny,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, insisted Sunday on ABC’sThis Week.
During Monday’s briefing at the White House, press secretary Jay Carney repeated the theme: “We should address the drivers of the deficit, and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit — that’s an economic fact.”
Well, saying it’s a fact doesn’t make it so.
Durbin, Carney and others making that claim should take a look at the president’s own budget to see what’s really going on. On page 465 of the budget’s “Analytical Perspectives,” they’ll find a chart showing that Social Security ran a deficit of $48 billion last year. This year, Social Security will come up $50.7 billion short. In 2015, as more Baby Boomers retire, the gap between cash in and cash out is expected to reach $86.6 billion…
…Social Security represents more than one-fifth of federal spending, much too big to ignore. The likeliest fixes are well known. These include raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, tying cost-of-living adjustments more closely to actual inflation, and bumping up the retirement age for able-bodied future retirees. The sooner these changes are made, the less painful they will be.
But shoring up the program starts with politicians telling the truth about how Social Security works. That’s something the White House and congressional Democrats apparently think the public can’t handle.
Read the entire article at USA Today.
Update: Unreal… Harry Reid: We Already Cut ONE BILLION, We Need to Get Some Credit for That
Update 2: Democrats Fight to the Death for Bigger Government
