USA Today reached deep into the storeroom of distortions and misrepresentations to try to scare people about the "looming bankruptcy" of Social Security. This line appeared in the first paragraph. It gives "looming" a new meaning, since the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the program will be able to pay all scheduled benefits for the next 39 years with no changes whatsoever. If we have changes comparable to those put in place in each of the decades from the 50s through the 80s, then the program will be fully solvent until almost the end of the century. In fact, the baby boomers hardly pose a major crisis for Social Security as demonstrated by the fact that most of the boomers will be dead at the point the trust fund is projected to be depleted in 2046. The real problem with Social Security is that we are projected to live longer lives. Life expectancy has always been increasing and poses no greater threat to the country in the future than it did in the past. As CBO director Peter Orszag has repeatedly pointed out, the real source of the country's projected budget problems is the projected growth in health care spending. The U.S. already spends twice as much per person than the average for other wealthy countries. If it health care spending continues to grow at the projected rate, it will devastate the private sector and also lead to enormous budget problems. If the health care system is not fixed, the country will face enormous economic problems even if Social Security and Medicare were eliminated altogether. It would have been useful if this piece had pointed out the problem that health care spending poses for the country and the need to fix the health care system rather than make false or misleading statements about how the aging of the baby boomers is driving the country to ruin. (At one point the piece makes the outrageous assertion that: "On this one issue, liberals and conservatives agree: It's an unsustainable path, it must be altered, and Democrats and Republicans must do it together." This is completely untrue. many liberals recognize that if health care costs are brought in line with those of other wealthy countries with longer life expectancies than the United States, the budget problems facing the country are quite manageable.)
--Dean Baker
