BREAKING!!! Social Security benefits are ruining the Federal Budget!!! Brimstone!!! Pestilance!!! Cats and dogs living together!!! With such a terrible future staring us in the face, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the source...
...and if you search the entire "Budget of the U. S. Government - Fiscal Year 2011", you'll only find funds allocated for the Social Security Administration.
$12.5 billion for the Social Security Administration, an 8 percent increase, targeted at reducing backlogs and improving service for the American public
Of course, the problem is that too many folks confuse the Federal budget (above) with the "unified" budget, which includes everything (Social Security and Medicare benefits, Fannie and Freddie, etc). There's a front-page article which states that Social Security benefits consume 20% of the Federal Budget (equal to our Defense spending). I disagree... Social Security benefits consume zero-percent of the Federal Budget, since they aren't even part of that budget.
Now, I don't have a problem with Obama appointing a blue-ribbon(?) panel to look at the Federal budget deficit. But it's not quite kosher to treat the "unified" deficit as a single problem. It's sort of like if a family has a spending problem: don't try to correct the "family" budget. Instead, work on the family members whose spending is out of control.
Now, it might be true that the Social Security and Medicare programs are in (or might soon be in) trouble, but that's a problem for those programs to fix... they have their own revenue stream. But the current problem isn't with Social Security. The current problem is in the "Budget of the U. S. Government", and that's where the work needs to be done.