Your Social Security by Tom Margenau

It's time for me to get out the shovel and hose, slog through the muck once again, and clean things off so my readers will get a nice clear picture of what's really going on with the future of Social Security.

Just last week, the Social Security Board of Trustees released their annual report on the financial status of our nation's primary retirement safety net — the Social Security program.

And immediately, the pundits and spin doctors on both sides of the political spectrum began to twist the facts to reinforce their agendas. In a nutshell, many Republicans said the report confirms that Social Security — and the economy as a whole, for that matter — is going you know where in a handbasket, and that if we don't take drastic action soon, grandma will be forced into eating birdseed before she knows what hit her.

On the other hand, many Democrats said the report confirms that we should remain calm and that we have time to make prudent decisions about the future of the world's largest social insurance program.

The Trustees report also painted an even bleaker picture of the Medicare trust fund. But this column is called "Your Social Security," so I'm sticking with just the portion of the report, and the reaction to it, that dealt with the retirement program.

So, who's telling the truth — the pessimistic Republicans or the optimistic Democrats? As is so often the case, the facts lie somewhere in between.

Let's look at the report. As even a high school sophomore taking his or her first economics class could have predicted, the news wasn't good. Under the crushing burden of the worst recession in a half-century, the Social Security system is projected to run into a financing shortfall years earlier than had been predicted in past reports.

The Social Security program, which for decades has taken in far more in taxes than it has been required to pay in benefits, will reverse the flow through its financing pipeline in just seven years. The trustees say that by 2016, Social Security will be paying out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenues.

And that's the part of the report the Republicans jump on.

"Oh my gosh," I can hear them crying, "in the same year that Rush Limbaugh finally reaches his 65th birthday, the Social Security system will go belly-up and he won't get what's coming to him!"

But the trustee's report also points out that after 2016, Social Security will be able to fall back on its trust fund reserves and will continue to pay full benefits until 2037.

And that's the part of the report that the Democrats emphasize when they say we have time to make reasonable choices about the future of the system. The problem with that argument is that they have been saying, "We have time" for about the past 15 years or so.

Here's what I predict will happen.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, President Barack Obama will appoint a "bipartisan, blue ribbon" committee on Social Security reform. That's not too big a deal. Every president in recent memory has appointed just such a commission. The problem is that the recommendations for reform that grew out of those past commissions made the headlines for a couple news cycles or so, but then the reports were filed away in impressive-looking binders and ended up on dusty bookshelves in the basement of the White House and the Capitol.

But my hunch is this time, the report and its recommendations will be heeded and real Social Security reform — like an increase in the retirement age, a small increase in the payroll tax, and a small decrease in benefits for future retirees — will be phased in over the next 10 to 20 years.

By the way, the last time this happened was in 1983 when President Ronal Reagan's "National Commission on Social Security Reform" led to some major changes in the Social Security program that have kept the system solvent to this day. Those changes included tax increases and benefit cuts. And guess what? The formation of that commission, and more importantly, the political will to implement its recommended reforms, followed the release of a very bleak report from the Social Security Board of Trustees.

To find out more about Tom Margenau and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.