Sep 22 2009
CBO: Social Security to Go Broke Next Year
Hot Air has received a report from the Congressional Office Budget that has been sent to legislators, but not yet released to the public, showing that Social Security will go broke not in ten years, or 20 years, or 50 years, but next year. The report, which you can view here, shows Social Security running a deficit next year and then permanent deficits getting larger and larger starting in 2016.
Now you may recall that in 2005 then President Bush tried to reform Social Security by allowing younger workers to invest 4% of the payroll tax they pay into private accounts so that we would actually get back some of the what we put into the system since our parents are going to blow it all. You may also recall that the Democrats had a hissey fit and then went running around the country scaring old people into believing Republicans were trying to take away their Social Security, which anyone with common sense knew was a lie. Being the horrible communicator that Bush was, he naturally failed to make the case as to why reform was necessary and the Democrats got away with scaring grandma and the Republicans ran away from the plan with their tail between their legs being the usual wimps that they are. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), in particular, said that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Social Security and it was rock solid for another 50 years. The Republicans just wanted to get rid of it because they’ve always hated it. And the GOP has always hated it, but that is irrelevant to the fact that Social Security has been on a collision course with insolvency for a long, long time and now it appears to have hit it way early.
JIM LEHRER: Okay. Social Security: How does what Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said yesterday about personal savings accounts, how is that going to affect the debate in the Congress, particularly in the Senate?
SEN. HARRY REID: Well, I think it’s going to help what we’re saying. What we’re saying is there is no crisis. This is a manufactured crisis.
Social Security, if we don’t do anything, it’s safe for approximately the next 50 years. When I mean safe, people will draw 100 percent of their benefits.
And if we still decide to do nothing after that, people will still draw 80 percent of the benefits. We have to do something to take care of the out years, but it’s a manufactured crisis.
And the president, you know, all you have to do is see what some of the real right-wing groups have talked about over the years. They don’t like Social Security. They want toe get rid of it.
This is an effort to get rid of Social Security. What the president is talking about these private accounts — I was interested to see in his press conference, I read before I got here what he said in his press conference. He talks about $2 trillion.
Well, it’s going to be money we’ll save. The $2 trillion just makes Social Security worse. It doesn’t help at all the solvency of Social Security. Privatization is a bad idea. It’s been proven in Chile; it’s been proven in Great Britain.
We also know that he’s talking about benefit cuts — benefit cuts, as much as 40 percent. That’s very, very bad. Of course, we know that it would increase the debt significantly.
We need — there are a lot of problems we have in America today with pensions. We have airlines that are in effect going broke unless we give them some relief with their pension programs, but that’s separate and apart from what the president’s talking about with Social Security.
I believe that not only is it a program that is designed to do away with the most successful social program in the history of the country, but it’s also, I think, an effort to divert attention from issues that are important, from Iraq, from health care, from this huge deficit we have.
I like at the end how Reid says Bush’s plan was an effort to steer talk away from the huge national debt we have. My, how his attitude has changed on that one.
So I wonder now what the excuse will be as this report becomes more public. It’s already been whipping through the Internet today.
Social Security is going broke next year. Medicare is set to go broke in less than ten years and somehow we will magically come up with a trillion dollars to pay for public health insurance.
PffT! Bush was trying to ‘reform’ social security? That’s one way to spin it.
The middle class took the biggest soaking under Bush. Thus we are where we are today. The only winners were the top 2 percent. EVERYONE else got taken for trillions.
We would have been better off with Gore’s ‘lock box’.
Bane:
Do you realize the report from the News Hour was from 2005. That was 4 years ago, and prior to the financial melt-down of 2008. Things, of course, look different now. As to the reality on the ground, which you do see rightly: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”