Social Security Report Delayed Until June 30
Nothing sinister. The Social Security and Medicare Annual Reports are released together each year because each interacts deeply with the other. The new Health Care Reform law significantly changes Medicare and so the Obama Administration decided to update its numbers to match the new reality. Which makes sense. But expect opponents to mount a hissy fit about Obama ‘hiding’ something.
Because that is what they do.
Consider this an open thread.
gives us some time to mount a “facts based” explanation of the Reports. your friends up to anything along those lines?
Bruce,
Obviously Obama is hiding something….
(smile its Tuesday and I’m getting ready to celebrate the wife’s B-day and actually found something she doesn’t have (married just short of 21 years)! Best part is the kids are pooling their own money and going to the mall to find her something (without ANY prodding). They could come back with a fishbowl and she would love it…)
This announcement is actually a positive note for SS reform. This allows a delay in starting anything serious until after the report and then further delay for the election. The optics of messing with SS this close to November are not good. So my bet this pushes the “fix” discussion into 2011. Then with a hopefully R house this entire “SS fix” idea will go into the crapper. My two cents.
Islam will change
Buff
wish you were right
but the latest in the media is “all parties agree that something must be done…”
They have brought a bright young guy named Alex Lawson on board at Roger’s CFA to organize outreach to younger workers and blogs. There are even suggestions that a dime or quarter might get thrown my way for contributing content.
It’s not splashy, but it isn’t nothing.
Will the report assume the “doctor fix” finally gets passed? If so, which Senators have come out saying that they will actually vote to cut payments to AMA members? Who is willing to piss off wealthy corporate lobbyists?
how about an independent accounting report. hire that guy from “dave”.
cowherd
nothing wrong with the accounting. even the projections are reasonable if you read the numbers and don’t listen to the dark mutterings of the prose, or the wild hype of the Petersons. and the reporters and columnists who cover them.
or the “good guys” who have forgotten what social security is and think it’s some kind of welfare program.
Yesterday I heard Robert Reich make a pro immigration argument based on the need caused by the strain of social security.
yeah, Reich
is a liberal who will use anything to argue for what he believes in. he is apparently too dumb to realize there is no strain “of” social security.
Hmmm. Maybe nothing sinister, but it is going impact the outcome of this.
For those of you who want SS to be left alone this is not a good development. I know you do not like it when I harp on ST developments at the Fund. But the short term will drive the long term outcome.
Take a look at the results in the 1stQ. Big drops in the surplus number. We are on track for a 40-60b surplus in 2010 vs 121b in 09. Cash defict of ~50b. Revenues are continuing to decline YoY.
So follow the time line and this comes up for discussion in the 1st Q 2011. The results of the Fund for the second half of this year will be awful. And that is what the decisions on what to do will be based on.
bk
Ben Bernanke has begun to beat the entitlement drums as well.
BK as I have urged you to do many times, isolate DI from OASI and see how much of the problem is being driving by short term changes in the former. And then consider how much of those changes get offset once your DI recipient in the medium term turns into your long-term OASI recipient, a certain amount of the impact ends up washing out long term.
The medium and long term is made up of a bunch of short terms. I don’t think we will get to this medium and long term you refer to. The rules will change before we get there. By next January the numbers will suggest that SS will top out in 2012 at about 2.7T. That is about 1.3T short of the recent CBO score (~4.0T for 2020).
That reality does not bother you?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. If you look at unemployment year over year:
200854.85.120097.78.28.620109.79.79.7
then the trend looks horrible, but I don’t know anyone predicting 11 percent unemployment in first quarter 2011. Why are you projecting such miserable numbers continuing for SS?
formatting issue:
2008 5.0 4.8 5.1
2009 7.7 8.2 8.6
2010 9.7 9.7 9.7