Social security crisis?

From National Review:

According to the latest annual report of the Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds, the surplus in 2004 was $64.4 billion dollars. It will be higher this year — at $87.7 billion. The surplus will keep getting bigger and bigger through 2008, when it will reach $108 billion. Each year, that’s more and more money that the federal government won’t have to raise from the world capital markets. It’s a captive audience of bond buyers — and a growing one.

Most observers point to 2018 as the earliest year for the Social Security crisis to begin. But that’s only the year the crisis will pass an especially attention-grabbing milestone. That’s the year, according to the trustees, that the Social Security surplus will disappear entirely and become a deficit. In other words, for the first time tax revenues will be less than the benefits paid out that year. From the standpoint of public finance, though, it will just be another painful year in which the federal government had to raise more money from capital markets — or raise taxes more or trim more spending — than it did the year before. By 2018, the Treasury will have already received $359 billion less cash each year, cumulatively, than it received in the peak year of 2008.

On the other hand...

Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of our nation – a retirement safety net for millions of Americans. Yet, the Bush Administration is making privatizing Social Security a top legislative priority next Congress, claiming that the program is in “crisis.”

That is not true – Social Security is not in crisis. Please read today’s column from Paul Krugman (“Inventing a Crisis,” 12/7/04, New York Times). - Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

There they go again. Once again this Administration is deliberately misleading the public by creating a false crisis. The Administration's campaign to convince the American public of a 'crisis' in Social Security is a mirror image of their phony campaign to convince the American public of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. - Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) called on Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne B. Barnhart today to stop playing political messages to callers placed on hold in the Social Security's telephone system. As President Bush begins to sell his Social Security privatization plan with claims of a looming Social Security "crisis," the Social Security Administration is forcing callers to their 800 number to listen to inaccurate propaganda with a "crisis" spin... - Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Forget all the scare talk. There is no crisis in Social Security, except for political threat to its survival from Republicans who have been gunning for it since the 1930s. - International Labor Communications Association

The debate over George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security seems to be heating up, and some media outlets are beginning to notice the flaws in the White House's argument that there is an imminent "crisis" in the decades-old government program. On the January 11 NBC Nightly News broadcast, anchor Brian Williams seemed to be addressing that issue, introducing a segment by noting that "critics say he's exaggerating the problem to sell his plan, while not yet talking about big cuts in future retiree benefits." - Fairness in Accuracy & Reporting