My but this was a shocker this morning. NY Times: "Social Security to see payout exceed pay-in this year"
The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.Let me get this straight: one of America's largest entitlement programs dips into the red six years ahead of schedule and nobody in the Obama White House saw it coming? Because it's curious how the Democrats had to rush through a brand new, expensive entitlement less than a week before we found out an old one is broke. Maybe they were concerned that some Americans would recoil at another new government program to feed as the old ones fall apart.
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.
The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.
Hmmm...curious indeed.
2 comments:
Grrrrr! Democrats! Those masters of devious timing bumped their originally-scheduled August 2008 health care vote, then let the September target date pass also, then delayed further until the President had to cancel his late-December trip for the Christmas vote, all the while tricking the Republicans into using stall tactics and parliamentary procedures just to play into the Democrats' hands, then waited to see Scott Brown's election because having 60 Senate votes simply wasn't a fun challenge, then skipped having the vote before the intended State of the Union announcement because the dumb old speech was running long anyway, then ran out the string for two more months, all so they could pull the trigger RIGHT before the SSA news.
It's so plausible!
YES! Thank you.
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