Re: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] Democrats Deny Social Security's Red Ink

now why do you suppose that happend? read up on what it was used for the general fund.. Medicare consumes? I guess I will think about that when I pay my monthy preiumiums to medicare,, as far as I know every single person on medicare pays into it every month,,

----- Original Message -----

From: Bruce Majors

To: tea-party-patriots@googlegroups.com

Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 11:59 AM

Subject: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] Democrats Deny Social Security's Red Ink

From: subscriberservices@factcheck.org(FactCheck.org) Date: Fri, Feb 25,
2011, 10:25pm (CST+6) To:
Democrats Deny Social Security's Red Ink
Some claim it doesn't contribute to the federal deficit, but it does.
February 25, 2011

Summary

Some senior Democrats are claiming that Social Security does not
contribute "one penny" to the federal deficit. That's not true. The fact
is, the federal government had to borrow $37 billion last year to
finance Social Security, and will need to borrow more this year. The red
ink is projected to total well over half a trillion dollars in the
coming decade. President Barack Obama was closer to the mark than some
of his Democratic allies when he said that Social Security is "not the
huge contributor to the deficit that [Medicare and Medicaid] are."
That's correct: Medicare and Medicaid consume more borrowed funds than
Social Security, and their costs are growing more rapidly. But Obama's
own budget director, Jacob Lew, was misleading when he wrote recently
that "Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing." That's not
true, except in a very narrow, legalistic sense, and doesn't change the
fact that Social Security is a growing drain on the government's
finances. Payroll taxes exceeded benefit payments regularly until 2010.
But the fact is that Social Security has now passed a tipping point,
beyond which the Congressional Budget Office projects that it will
permanently pay out more in benefits than it gathers from Social
Security taxes. The imbalance is made even larger this year by a
one-year "payroll tax holiday" that was enacted as part of last year's
compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts. The lost Social Security tax
revenues are being made up with billions from general revenues and must
all be borrowed. The combined effect is to add $130 billion to the
deficit in the current fiscal year. It’s important to note that
benefit payments are not in immediate danger. Under current law,
scheduled benefits can be paid until about 2037, according to the most
recent projections. But keeping those benefits flowing is already
requiring the use of funds borrowed from the public. So we judge the
claim that Social Security is not currently contributing to the deficit
to be false.

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