The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that Social Security will effectively run a $45-billion deficit in 2011 and continue to run deficits totaling $547 billion over the coming decade.
The admission comes in the CBO’s semi-annual economic review that projects federal spending, debt, and economic growth. In the report, the CBO also examines the impact of projected economic performance on the trust fund that nominally funds Social Security.
“Excluding interest, surpluses for Social Security become deficits of $45 billion in 2011 and $547 billion over the 2012–2021 period,” the CBO reported.
This means that in order to pay benefits Social Security will need $45 billion more than it will collect in payroll taxes this year, and $547 billion more over the next decade.
The “interest” the CBO mentions is the interest that the federal government owes to the Social Security trust fund because the trust fund is legally obligated to take Treasury bonds – federal government debt – in exchange for the cash revenues raised by Social Security payroll taxes.
The CBO uses the interest payments on the bonds to account for the difference between what Social Security collects in taxes and what it pays out in benefits, if benefit payments exceed tax receipts.
Normally, payroll taxes are used to pay current Social Security benefits, with any excess revenues being exchanged for Treasury bonds. Because the Social Security trust fund is populated with these bonds, the federal government essentially owes interest on those bonds to itself, providing the CBO with another apparent source of revenue for the funds.
However, the fund is not taking in enough money to pay out its obligations, nor will it for the foreseeable future, according to the CBO. Adding the interest owed by one government account – the general fund of the U.S. Treasury – to another – the Social Security trust fund – is merely an exercise in moving money from one part of the federal budget to another. It does not mean that there is extra money available to pay Social Security benefits.
Nothing to worry about, though. John McCain is ready to deal! — maybe, form a gang of 6 that will effectively make sure the big unfunded statist entitlements in place won’t be going anywhere anytime soon because evil downer Republicans want to act all mean and start cutting shit.
And the media is eating it up. Suddenly, McCain is his old maverick self — not the dithering old hater he was when the media needed to juxtapose him with the forward-thinking messiah who was going to return hope to America and transform it into a Utopia for the Pepsi Generation.
And he is eating that up.
Honestly. Is there any way we can usher this family of phony conservatives off the stage? For freedom?
No! Meghan has ideas and tattoos and twitter followers and stuff.
And a book! It was a pop up book, I think. Not sure.
Oh, and nice tits.
Funny that Madoff is in prison for a ponzi scheme that measures 1% of SS.
I gave my son a lecture yesterday (I’m prone to do that ) that he should never – EVER consider that SS will be there when he needs it. It won’t be there for me.
I informed him, that when he works he should just imagine the money taken out of his paycheck for SS as merely money STOLEN from him.
The lecture was much longer than this, of course.
The only deal for Social Security is making it pencil. That means rolling back eligiblity dates, not increasing benefits, etc.
John McCain is feeling sad that he did not support repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. How about sticking to his allegedly fiscal conservative guns and focus on cutting spending.
Right or left, the federal government — composer of State narratives and designer and conformer of lives in dependency — is here to provide, Jeff. State education, state medicine, state retirement, state salaries, state pensions, state authorizations and licenses and safeties and policies, and all of it in union with the state-run press’s tidy matching message that’s packaged up and sent it on its way to tens and tens of millions of willing, grinning, envious, consuming consumerly consumers every day of every year.
Freedom? Not when we have R and D Presidents to fix economies and educations and medicines and retirements and every other damn thing as a matter of course, split into nice, predictable four year parcels.
In the other thread folks suggested the majority of us do not think this way and that polls saying but oh we do, we do are bogus. I fail to see the proof of that. Every four years we roll out some new bullshit about some new bullshit and the nation goes aah and gets back to riding the dying elephant of state. The thing ratchets forward and the cycle repeats until one day soon, it cannot anymore and it expires.
Now, now Jeff. You’ve got to stop focusing on the numbers. Everything is just fine, and the arithmetic works.
The question: Is he really this stupid or does he figure we are?
No, they said that poll was bullshit. Which it was.
I think FOX should give Geraldo the go ahead and have him go find — and open on camera — the Social Security Lock Box.
Talk about a comeback! Not to mention, vindication!
The answer is a single, three-letter word.
Do you see any government reductions out there, bh?
Non-responsive to my point, JHo.
Those who didn’t or weren’t able to save enough for their retirements will still get social security. In fact, they’ll get theirs and yours. You won’t need yours because you did what you were supposed to do and saved enough money to live without a job. If you complain about this coming arrangement it will be because you want to see old people eating cat food. Hater.
Who cares if the math is right?
Old people need their money! And you can’t touch SS because the oldie got to get paid!
…….well, the healthy geezers, that is. The sick ones need to go on that special list.
Non-responsive to mine, bh:
Not one of which did not predate ObarkyKare, and not one of which is solvent.
We spend one hundred thousand dollars a second on social entitlements. We owe in excess of one hundred trillion dollars in debt and such obligations. We lie through our teeth at one another from our political offices and press microphones. And the willing populace buys the sound bites and sits on its hands, doing nothing at all to not stem, but reverse the red ink and pay what are now its debts.
How can this possibly be?
We had the USSA established long, long before Obama came along and indulged his transparent, pandering, narcissism at our further expense while we do, in effect, more nothing.
f you complain about this coming arrangement it will be because you want to see old people eating cat food. Hater.
I also included this in my lecture.
Our old folks are not the government’s responsibility. They are OURS. You take care of your mom and dad, I’ll take care of mine.
Who came up with this f-ed up system?
A lot of us are trying, JHo.
Fine.
You didn’t choose a poor news peg to hang your post on. You didn’t then essentially accuse the commenters here who pointed that out of being out-of-touch Pollyannas.
It simply has not hit people where they live yet. They have jobs and houses and families. They come home from a long day, pop a beer and watch a ball game. Life is good.
They are not bad people, they just believe that food comes from the grocery store. What exists before that point is something they are vaguely aware of, but not in a way that they will spend even 2 seconds thinking or worrying about. Why would they? When they want food, they go to the grocery store.
Listen to newly elected Sen Mike Lee address the Federalist Society. Have you ever heard a Senator talk like this about these subjects? I can’t recall one myself. Political change, both for the worse as well as for the better, is for the most part slow in taking place. The work is underway.
Addressing Jeff and bh, I know we’re not who we’re preaching to. My point is that the collective “we” is a fool. The statist wheel turns, the pawl clicks home, the system breaks a little more, and we become inured anew.
Assertion: There is no way to stop it from dying an ugly death.
It’s that assertion that has to be addressed before we can so much as decide on how, but apparently the collective we is still hopeful that state everything can be made to work, just maybe not but maybe so 100% state medical. IOW, what Makewi said. The water’s not hot enough yet.
It cannot be made to work. Do we agree it’s doomed? Ok.
From there, which Party actually gets to reforming the wreckage. From there, which means shall they use, politically speaking. From there, in which era shall they perform this miracle. From there, how do we get there from here and elect them.
BTW Jeff, I think you’re doing yeoman’s work. Any hope starts with quashing the bullshit of state.
“O.K., so I’ve taken money from every paycheck you’ve ever earned in your working life and promised I’d send you monthly checks once you reached a certain age. But here’s the thing: I spent it. To give any back I’ll have to use other people’s money…so, really, you’re stealing from them — you heartless, old, greedy, thieving bastard!“
Ok, it’s cool, JHo.
Grandpa Simpson (at the Social Security office): I’m old, gimme gimme gimme!
…
Bart Simpson: Didn’t you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?
Grampa Simpson: I figured it was because the Demmie-crats were back in power.
…
Marge Simpson: Where’d you get all the money?
Grampa Simpson: The government. I didn’t earn it, I don’t need it, but if they miss one payment I’ll raise hell.
if you complain about this coming arrangement it will be because you want to see old people eating cat food.
My Mom made me eat peas. Blech!
When she’s senile and I’m paying $7k/ month for the nursing home (even after her LTC policy has ponied up), I’m going to hug her every day and then tell them to occasionally feed her cat food.
I guarantee if I one day make it to Heaven (see above), she’ll think it was hilarious.
As to the polite dust up up thread, “the water is not hot enough yet” don’t, uh, hold water. Or maybe that was Makewi’s point.
Think slow boiled frog. By the time JHo’s collective idiot “we” figure out this ain’t a jacuzzi, a fat chunk of the “we” are dead for all practical purposes.
What’s left of Americans won’t be of a particular “Party” so to speak. Sure as hell won’t be no independents. I pray historians will simply call it the Second American Revolution and look back on it as a monumental turning point that threw a socialist based new aristocracy to the dust bin and re-lit the Founders dream.
But then there’s the entitlement fuck up generation behind us watching Skins on MTV…
So, yeah, probably not.
Great conversation here. I’m feeling JHoward’s lament here big time, but it is people like Mr. Lee, who sdferr accurately points out is talking about issues that I haven’t seen federal level politicians talk about before, that has me somewhat less in despair. The tea party has me optimistic, too. It truly is a grass roots organization that has already made progress.
Regarding Makewi’s #21, that is about right. The idea that people can actually help themselves, and other people, without the strong arm of the state is anathema to a whole host of people anymore. I see it everyday in my job (large county government) and when I’m forced to see my family. The thought doesn’t ever enter their heads that before the Progressives in Teddy Roosevelt, before FDR, before LBJ and before this latest plastic moron, people helped other people out of the goodness of their hearts. True real compassion and charity. Not state mandated wealth redistribution. Just today, I was assisting a very nice young lady with a computer issue and she was lamenting how bad the inner city family has become and how needed her department is to counteract the depredation of these families. It doesn’t occur to her at all that state benevolence is what destroyed that inner city family. It never even enters the picture.
I retired a while back, and am eligible for SS–something which doesn’t factor into our finances to a significant degree. We won our personal war on poverty, after a long struggle. We aren’t rich, just nice and comfortable.
I also understand the rationale behind SS. No one consulted me on the issuance of my SS card–simply extorted money from me on a continuing basis. All I wish from the government is the REFUND of that extorted tax, and ONLY my segment of it. The matching part is of no concern.
And when that amount is reached, the gov’t can do 2 things–STOP the checks and fuck themselves sideways with a flaming pineapple.
Point her to that John McWhorter piece Ron Radosh linked the other day. Maybe she can trust his account.
Thanks for the link, sdferr. As usual McWhorter says it a whole lot better than I and like you said, he may hold resonance for this particular young lady (read: not a moonbat).
And why should we believe the CBO when it says SS will run a deficit of only 45 billion?
If I remember correctly, the CBO under estimated by $500 billion on their deficit projection last year.
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All I wish from the government is the REFUND of that extorted tax, and ONLY my segment of it.
Money now has more value than the same amount in the future. Not only due to inflation but because one might have invested the money in such a way that it returned more than the inflated amount in the future. Granted, most people would not have invested the additional money from their paychecks, but the point is that no one was given the opportunity to do so.
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