OMB director Jacob Lew, from the turnstile:
Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing. They are paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. These taxes are placed in a trust fund dedicated to paying benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries.
[…]
For years, the surpluses in the Social Security trust fund have helped to mask our deficits elsewhere. Now that we are paying Social Security back, the problem is not with Social Security, but with the rest of the budget. In 2001 and 2003, Washington cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and later expanded Medicare without paying for it. Blaming Social Security for our fiscal woes is like blaming you for not saving enough in your checking account because the bank lost all depositors’ money.
Replace “Washington” in the second-to-last sentence with “Republicans and the Bush Administration rammed through” and we are in full agreement. Now if we can just get serious people talking in these terms on the serious Sunday morning shows (and etc…) every week for the next 20 or so years, the logical argument can finally begin on equal footing.
Lemkin 