Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has a useful piece in USA Today, separating Social Security from the larger discussion on debt and deficits. As he notes, Social Security is not responsible for our long-term budget problems:
Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing. They are paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. These taxes are placed in a trust fund dedicated to paying benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries. [...]
According to the most recent report of the independent Social Security Trustees, the trust fund is currently in surplus and growing. Even though Social Security began collecting less in taxes than it paid in benefits in 2010, the trust fund will continue to accrue interest and grow until 2025, and will have adequate resources to pay full benefits for the next 26 years.
To illustrate Lew's point, here is a nifty chart:
This, from The New York Times, shows the projected number of years that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds would remain solvent, based on the year of projections. As you can see, Social Security looks fine, even though the latest projection was made during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Yes, lawmakers need to shore up Social Security for the very long-term, but as far as debt is concerned, the real problem is Medicare and more broadly, rising health-care costs. Repeating this is like beating a dead horse, but I will do so for as long as "deficit hawks" target Social Security for cuts.
