Is there really a crisis?

[struggle4progress]

By Karen Tumulty and Eric Roston
Monday, January 17, 2005 Posted: 3:25 PM EST (2025 GMT)

<snip> TIME's latest poll gives some indication of what Bush faces: 49 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the President's handling of Social Security, while only 40 percent said they approve. And that's before Bush has even put forward the details of his plan. <snip>

What will actually happen in 2018, according to the Social Security trustees who oversee the program, is that the money paid out in benefits will begin to exceed the amount collected in taxes. And since Social Security will run a surplus until then (and has been running one for some time), it has billions available that it can tap to fill the gap. Even under conservative estimates, the system as it stands will have enough money to pay all its promised benefits until 2042 and most of its obligations for decades after. <snip>

That projected shortfall is not a new situation, or even the worst that Social Security has faced. The system came within days of insolvency in the early 1980s. And there's always the option of fixing it the way policymakers did then, by raising taxes or tinkering with benefits by, for example, raising the retirement age. It's not a permanent solution, but it could add many decades to the life of the program. <snip>

There's also an inconvenient fact that Bush rarely mentions: if workers start investing payroll taxes in individual accounts, the government will need another source to cover benefits for retirees --as much as $2 trillion by some estimates. The options are grim: borrowing heavily, cutting benefits or both. <snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/17/bush.socialsecurity.tm/

[Options Remain]

1. the crisis is we are asleep in the back seat

and the driver is drunk.

TearForger