I feel remiss in not reporting lately on the most recent news concerning the crown jewel of the progressive liberal welfare state: Social Security. It is the ur-program from which all the other major programs (such as Medicare) were spawned. Over the years, I have periodically reported on its looming fiscal crisis, but I haven’t said much during the past year.
So it’s time to check up on the program that has elected so many generations of Democratic politicians. Surprise, surprise — it is accelerating downwards!
Start with that cesspool of fraud, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). A report in the estimable Investor’s Business Daily informs us that Obama has set another new record. Not only is he the Debt President (having added more to the federal deficit in his short time in office than any other chief executive — nearly $5 trillion, more than the big-spending Bush spent in 8 years), the Food Stamp President (having added to the rolls of food stamp recipients more than twice the number of new recipients per year — over 4 million — than even the prior record-setter, Bush, who added 1.84 million yearly), and the Emigration President (having presided over a political economy in which a record number of Americans renounce their citizenship — nearly 1,800 last year, compared to about 200 in 2008). In addition to those titles, Obama is now the Disability President.
Yes, a record number of people have gone on SSDI during Obama’s benighted reign — a whopping 5.4 million. And the number is growing at a rapid clip: from January of this year through last month, an astonishing 540,000 more have been granted disability, and more than 750,000 have applied. Of the total (10.8 million) now on SSDI, half joined under Obama. America’s seemingly endless high unemployment is clearly taking its toll. Doubtless this will hasten the projected day of SSDI’s insolvency, scheduled already for 2018.
Turning to the Social Security retirement program (i.e., the main one), the news is grim again. As recently as 2007, the Social Security program ran a surplus of $186 billion. This dropped to a mere $3 billion the next year, and became a $49 billion deficit in 2009, in the depths of the recession. However, last year — a “recovery” year — Social Security ran a deficit of $45 billion. The program’s trustees now forecast a deficit of about $66 billion on average for the next six years. After that, the trustees project triple-digit billions in deficits. In 20 years — three years earlier than projected last year, the so-called trust fund (a bogus pile of IOUs from the federal government to itself) will be gone, at which point benefits will have to drop by 25%.
Strange to say, the Obama administration is far more concerned about whether Romney engaged in a mean prank half a century ago than about Social Security’s lack of solvency. Obama’s economic record is so wretched that one can see why he refuses to discuss the entitlement crisis. But why do the mainstream media refuse even to mention the government’s own report? Surely this report should be of immediate and vital concern to all the public. . . Oh, yeah — I forgot. The mainstream media, formerly noted for “investigative journalism,” has become the Amen corner of the Church of Obama.
