Free Republic

The Social Security program faces $9.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years, which is up $1 trillion from last year’s projection of $8.6 trillion, according to the latest report from Social Security’s board of trustees. The unfunded liability is the amount that has been promised in benefits to people now alive that will not be funded by the tax revenue the system is expected to take in to pay for those benefits. (The Social Security trustees calculate the unfunded liability for a period of 75 years into the future, from 2012 to 2087). …

Well, either Obama and Geithner are lying to us now, or they and all defenders of the Social Security status quo have been lying to us for decades. It must be one or the other. Here’s why: Social Security has a trust fund, and that trust fund is supposed to have $2.6 trillion in it, according to the Social Security trustees. If there are real assets in the trust fund, then Social Security can mail the checks, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit. President Obama’s budget director, Jack Lew, explained all this last February in USA Today:...

A year ago, this organization warned that the Bush Administration was planning to do something unthinkable - they were seriously considering signing a pact with Mexico that would give any Mexican who had worked in the U.S., including illegal aliens, full U.S. Social Security benefits, paid out of your Social Security Trust Fund! It seemed so far fetched, we had trouble convincing the Congress that it could happen. A White House spokesman denied our claim that it was on a fast track, stating the ongoing discussions for Totalization were just informal and preliminary. But we knew better. We had obtained...