Given the Post's crusade to cut Social Security, it is reasonable to ask whether Dana Milbank got a huge bonus for his column today. He is REALLY alarmed that President Bush's Social Security trustees project that the program will face a shortfall in 34 years. (The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the program will be able to pay all scheduled benefits for the next 39 years with no changes whatsoever.) Milbank is either too young or to old to remember that Social Security had faced problems in the past. In 1983, the program literally ran out of money. Guess what? No one missed a check. President Reagan and Congress set up a commission (chaired by Alan Greenspan) and they produced a compromise package that is now projected to leave the program fully solvent for 63 years. While it would not be advisable to wait until the trust fund is empty, we are still 39 years from our next 1983. Mr. Milbank must think that this country is in great shape if he thinks this distant and relatively minor problem should be at the top of the national agenda. Btw, if we changed our immigration rules so that the Post and other news outlets could freely hire more qualified columnists than Mr. Milibank at lower wages, it could eliminate close to half of the projected shortfall by bringing a larger share of wage income under the cap on the Social Security wage tax. This would be a real win-win policy. Where are the free-traders?
--Dean Baker
