The trustees of the Social Security trust fund issued their annual report yesterday. And once again, the projected date that the trust fund has been moved up. Now it’s 2036. The disability trust fund is in even worse shape. Its trustees say it is going to run out of funds in 2016, two years earlier than was predicted just last year.
And what is the Obama administration’s response? Here’s what The Wall Street Journal reported this morning. First on the disability trust:
“Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the Obama administration would seek to work with Congress to come up with a long-term solution to repair the solvency of the disability trust but didn’t offer specifics. ‘The best thing to do is a long-term solution,’ he said.”*
And on Social Security itself:
“President Obama’s re-election campaign used the new data to attack Mr. Romney …, saying [Romney] would make ‘devastating cuts to Medicare and Social Security’.”*
But what is the President suggesting?:
“The Obama administration has said it would support changes to Social Security to improve the program’s solvency but hasn’t proposed any.”*
In other words, we’re just the Administration. We can’t be expected to have a program. Barack Obama doesn’t have a proposal. He’s just the President. He’s got an opinion on Trayvon Martin, but nothing on Social Security. It’s like what Secretary Geithner told Representative Paul Ryan about Representative Ryan’s plan to solve our country’s long-range budget problem: We don’t have a plan. We just know we don’t like yours.
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* Damian Paletta, “Stress Rises on Social Security,” The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2012.
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