For folks not familiar with Social Security, it is the country's biggest social program. It costs over $600 billion a year (20 percent of the federal budget) and has 50 million beneficiaries. At a forum on Monday, after wrongly claiming that Social Security won't be there when young workers retire, McCain went on to say: "Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed." [Transcript available from Congressional Quarterly] Of course present-day retirees have always been paid their benefits from the taxes paid by current workers. That has been true from Social Security's inception. Some folks might have thought Senator McCain's description of Social Security as a "disgrace" was worth a mention somewhere in the media, but the NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, and USA Today don't seem to have noticed. It's not like he said "bitter."
--Dean Baker
