{"id":435281,"date":"2010-03-16T17:03:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T21:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidkirkpatrick.wordpress.com\/?p=7081"},"modified":"2010-03-16T17:03:52","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T21:03:52","slug":"social-security-%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/435281","title":{"rendered":"Social Security \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

… a long national nightmare begins. Without reform, medical care will eventually bankrupt the nation and\u00a0severely\u00a0cripple businesses, both large and small, long before. Social Security is that other entitlement program bugaboo, and in a moment of just\u00a0terrible\u00a0timing, the chickens have finally come to roost with the program — this year Social Security did not collect enough payroll taxes to cover benefit payments<\/a> for the first time in over twenty years.<\/p>\n

So what, you say? Maybe not so much.<\/p>\n

From the link:<\/p>\n

\n

For more than two decades,\u00a0Social Security\u00a0collected more money inpayroll taxes\u00a0than it paid out in benefits \u2014 billions more each year.<\/p>\n

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes \u2014 nearly $29 billion more.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs \u2014 in the form of\u00a0Treasury bonds\u00a0\u2014 which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.<\/p>\n

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion\u00a0budget deficit\u00a0this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.<\/p>\n

Social Security’s shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program’s finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there’s concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.<\/p>\n

“This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We’re here,” said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with\u00a0The Senior Citizens League, an\u00a0advocacy group. “We are not going to be able to put it off any more.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… a long national nightmare begins. Without reform, medical care will eventually bankrupt the nation and\u00a0severely\u00a0cripple businesses, both large and small, long before. Social Security is that other entitlement program bugaboo, and in a moment of just\u00a0terrible\u00a0timing, the chickens have finally come to roost with the program — this year Social Security did not collect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4050,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}