Gentle Reminder
by digby
The Washington Post regularly editorializes for cuts in Social Security benefits. It also routinely makes untrue statements in its news article about the state of the program that have the effect of undermining confidence in it. It did so yet again today with a front page story that told readers, “beginning in 2011, Social Security will take in less revenue than it pays out and will be forced to dip into reserves to pay benefits.” This is wrong, the program is projected by the Trustees to take in more money in tax revenue than it pays in benefits until 2017. The Congressional Budget Office puts this date at 2020. Of course being “forced to dip into reserves” is not a problem for the program. The reason that the program built up a huge stock of reserves (more than $2 trillion) was to defray the cost of the baby boomers retirement. We over-taxed workers for the last quarter century precisely so that we would have reserves to tap when the baby boomers retired.
So, when Pete Peterson claims that the baby boomers are selfishly saddling their own children with the burden of their retirement is nonsense. All of us have been paying extra into social security for nearly our entire working lives to pay for our retirement and it’s not going broke. Just saying.
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