An important message from the White House appears in on the op-ed page of USAToday. OMB Director Jacob Lew gives a succinct report of Social Security's condition.
The budget put forward by President Obama last week is a blueprint for how we can live within our means and win the future. As this begins the budgeting process in Washington, we need to be clear about the causes of the pressing fiscal problems we face. Specifically, looking to the next two decades, Social Security does not cause our deficits.
That's the message we needed to see the White House get, and repeat. The question remains, where do we go from here with Social Security having been dragged into the larger budget mess?
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.
The problem is not Social Security; the problem is the mismatch between outlays and revenues in the rest of the budget. Closing that gap and paying down our debt will take tough choices, and the president's budget makes them. Strengthening Social Security is an important, but parallel, issue that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. But let's not confuse it as either the cause of or a solution to our short-term fiscal problems.
All absolutely true. The problem there is the horse already left the barn on the revenue side of things with the tax-cut deal. Yes, there's a mismatch between outlays and revenues and the deal allows that mismatch to continue. Complicating this more for Social Security is the payroll tax holiday, and the revenues that will be lost for the program during a time when high unemployment is already creating a hit on it. So the difficulty for the administration in trying to create a parallel process for budget negotiation in which Social Security is strengthened is going to be next to impossible. Getting Social Security strengthened in this environment is going to be a massive challenge. At this point, just leaving it out of the negotiations entirely seems to be the saftest bet.
All that aside, good on the White House for getting out the facts on Social Security. More of that from all of our Dems, please.