Social Security is not in crisis.  Health Care is a crisis in this country, poverty is a crisis, Iraq is a crisis, and Iran is a crisis in the making.  We don't need to manufacture any more, especially since we've been paying more in payroll taxes than the system needs for 25 years.

Such a disapointing campaign by Obama.  Once again, using right wing themes.

Yes, Obama IS weak.  

Weak about supporting democrats.

Weak about supporting social security.

Weak about supporting equal status for all people, including gays.

Weak about showing up for votes that matter.

This guy is a study in weakness who hides behind surrogates who dish innuendo.

I agree. The article itself links to a recent debate where Obama agrees there's no real crisis. Then he happens to use the word "crisis" in an interview.

Calling this a gaffe would be hyperbole. But to imply that he's reinforcing a "right-wing frame" because in one article he mentions a crisis which previously claimed doesn't exist seems to be far too critical for my taste.

We can't have a person running for president who is on message all of the time. Clearly, Obama knows the real fiscal problems are with medicare/caid and not with SS.

I find it amusing that we b*itch over every single word that comes from Obamas mouth and if he says two or three words different from how we would say it, we write a million page Diary and launch an all out attack.

But Edwards and Clinton and all the other candidates? Not so much and they are far WORSE!

It's disgusting and people are taking note of it.

But, but, but Obama is charismatic.  He gave a really good speech once.

You rang?

Bill Clinton did, and he dealt with it so that Obama wouldn't have to. Why doesn't Obama talk about the real issues: annual deficits and health care. Piling up even more money in the Social Security trust fund so that the Republicans can blow it all on more wars won't fix anything.

Absolutely.  Clinton had a good plan to strengthen Social Security, which is unfortunately not doable any more because of the Bush deficits.  But he didn't use alarmist language to try and get people's attention.

If you want to talk policy, the "problem" with Social Security is a shortfall in revenues that might interfere with payments 40 years from now if the economy does poorly.  In a world where we have to prioritize and where we only have a limited amount of tax revenue to fix problems with, making it a priority to address the relatively minor issue with Social Security (as opposed to, for example, Medicare and the health care system) is irresponsible.

And when people talk about how there's a crisis with Social Security, they enable the Republican position that the program isn't working and we need to replace it with something else.  Rhetoric does matter.

The situation facing Social Security in 1998 was significantly different than the one today. At that point you could fairly say that Social Security faced a certain degree of challenge. Unless the economy managed to put through a significant string of better than average growth the long term health of Social Security was about 50/50.

Well guess what? The economy did put through a significant string of better than average growth and the results are what you could (and I did) predict at the time: depletion steadily being pushed out in time and the payroll gap shrinking. The results can be seen in this table EPI Social Security Issue Guide: Changes in Trustees Projections over Time
In 1997 the Trust Fund was projected to go to Depletion in 2029, a point of maximal demographic strain on the system, and the payroll gap was 2.23%. Ten years later Depletion is projected for 2041, when the median age of the Boomers will be 84 and as such rapidly shuffling off to Buffalo and points beyond, and the payroll gap is down to 1.95%.

Bill was right to be concerned. Then. Obama really has no excuse here, at best he can blame sloppy staff work. If only they had read any of my ten or so MyDD diaries on this, or maybe visited my Social Security website they could have avoided all this. Better yet they could have read the introduction to Dean Baker's Social Security: the Phony Crisis. Dean was on to these guys already by the late 90's

We have a chance, said President Clinton, to "fix the roof while the sun is still shining." He was talking about dealing with Social Security immediately, while the economy is growing and the federal budget is balanced. The audience was a regional conference on Social Security, in Kansas City, Missouri, that the White House had helped bring together.

The roof analogy is illuminating, but we can make it more accurate. Imagine that it's not going to rain for more than 30 years. And the rain, when it does arrive (and it might not), will be pretty light. And imagine that the average household will have a lot more income for roof repair by the time the rain approaches.

Now add this: most of the people who say they want to fix the roof actually want to knock holes in it.

This is the situation facing Social Security, and it is well known to those who have looked at the numbers. The program will take in enough revenue to keep all of its promises for over 30 years, without any changes at all. Thirty years is a long time--it's hard to think of any other program that can claim to be secure for that long. Furthermore, the forecast of a shortfall in 2034 is based on the economy limping along at less than a 1.7 percent annual rate of growth--about half the rate of the previous three decades. If the economy were to grow at 1998's rate, for example, the system would never run short of money.

So the choice is between agreeing with the GOP framing--which was previously Clinton's own framing--or agreeing with Regan's and Bush's Ayn Rand worshipping economist?

no thats absolute bullshit.

Clinton shored up SS for the long run with fiscal responsibility.  Gore ran on fiscal responsibility, though he used the lock box to essentially say he was not going to raid social security.

Bush has screwed that up, taking off years, but it still isnt in crisis.

Maybe you didnt pay much attention during the "privatization" time period where Santorum and Co in the Senate tried scaring the hell out of everyone saying there was a Crisis.

The crisis is that Bush is a fucking idiot, and sorry, but i dont want our nominees parroting that fucking idiots talking points.

The Obama supporters are amazing.

Every time they talk Social Security 'Crisis' the immediate call is for a bi-partisan commission which inevitably leads to call for compromise. We don't need a compromise on this, instead we need to turn it around and let FDR borrow Teddy's Big Stick to whack the crap out of Privatizers.

I laid this argument out in 2005 at my blog when I suggested it as a tactic for the midterms Unleash Your Inner FDR: Social Security as an Opportunity and repeated in a MyDD diary in Jan 2006 Social Security as a Weapon in the Mid-Terms Well nobody picked the message up at the time but it can still work for 2008 or 2010. The key message is not that the Right is wrong on Social Security, it is that they are lying. Again. Still. I put it this way more than two and a half years ago:

"I am going to suggest a simply yet powerful theme for the mid-terms: "Social Security is not broke. Not now, not in 2017, not in 2041. Any Republican who tells you it is is a liar or ignorant" "

We do not and should not concede even an inch on this issue. The opponents of Social Security don't have the numbers, moreover in sparring with them it is clear that they know that. You cannot draw an opponent of Social Security into a discussion of either near or long term growth projections. They know that once this gets expressed in numeric terms that they will get laughed right out of the argument and they simply won't got there. Believe me I have tried.

People your age (19) are not people Obama's age (46).

I agree that there has been a lot of negative propaganda in the mainstream media over the years.  We count on leaders to see through the propaganda storm, not to be suckered in by it.

When I was your age I thought the same thing. This was just after the Social Security trust fund nearly ran out of money in 1983, so no offense but I think I was being more realistic than you. At the time the issue was pretty immediate for me, my father had died a few years earlier and my family was surviving on our SSI benefits. Then Bill Clinton won election and he rapidly turned things around.

Today the trust fund is projected to last for another 30 to 40 years, and to last beyond the foreseeable future if the economy does as well as it has during the mediocre Bush years. There is no reason in the world for people in your generation to think Social Security won't be around for you, you guys can't be such easy marks for Charles Schwab and the Republicans.

I'm 37, but I remember very well that when I was your age, I believed Social Security wouldn't be there for me either when I retired.  I think I've seen polling that suggests this has been true since the dawn of the program.  I mean, how hard is it to believe anything will be the same 50 years from now?

Now that I understand the workings of Social Security better, I know that the only things that will keep it from being there for my retirement are Republicans somehow managing to kill the program, or a collapse of the American economy altogether, in which case we're screwed no matter what.

When people like Obama talk about a crisis, it appeals to voters like yourself because you think he's showing the courage to tell the truth unlike other politicians, but actually he's not.  I've seen it from other people much older than yourself who buy into the "crisis" framing.  All we can do is ask Democrats not to reinforce a belief that just isn't so.

After the 1983 reform the Cato Institute gathered a group of opponents of Social Security to design a strategy for the next time. The results of the conference were published in the Fall 1983 issue of the Cato Journal under the title SocialSecurity: Continuing Crisis or Real Reform. The actual battle plan was written by Germanis and Butler and published under the revealing title Social Security Reform: Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy In the article Butler and Germanis lay out a systematic propaganda strategy designed specifically to convince younger workers that Social Security simply wouldn't be there for them. In the twenty four years since the Right has followed the plan to the letter and with tremendous success.

Basically two generations simply got played on this one.

You're 19 and you've got it all figured out?

Really.

So, if SS is NOT in crisis, why does Obama claim it IS?   It will take getting back to close to a balanced budget to solve the financial shortfall it has been tracking on to get it back on track.

It sounds like you are saying Obama would fund deficits out of a larger Social Security surplus. I hope that is not what you meant, can you clarify?

I don't know that I could ever state with confidence that a tax increase would be "politically popular."  This applies moreso when we're talking about the payroll tax.  While I wish we lived in a country where voters would cheer a Democratic President for raising their taxes to shore up Social Security, and ask "What other spending measures can we support you on?", I don't think we live in that country.

If you gave me carte blanche to increase the cap on payroll taxes, I'd put the extra money towards fixing Medicare, which is much more of an issue.  Wouldn't even be a close call for me.  Every dollar you devote to "fixing" something that isn't a priority is a dollar you can't use on real priorities.

I would say Obama is an actual Democrat.  He is just not (or better said: no longer) a true progressive in the strict sense of the term.  His supporters seem to claim that he has staked out his own brand of progressivism, that does not align to any preconceived schema.  

To that traditional progressive end, Obama has fallen from 15th to 24th (out of 100 Senators) in progressive ranking in the latest updates on the rankings site http://progressivepunch.org

You can also see that reflected in Obama's ranking as a "rank and file Democrat" with govtrack, another progressive-ranking site, where Obama is ranked to the right of Clinton, Kucinich and Dodd and only to the left of Biden (out of our pool of candidates who also serve in Congress)

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/presiden tial.xpd

Obama has also made statements and announced votes that seem at odds with progressive values:  Opposition to the mining reform bill, pitting him against the environmental groups that have endorsed the bill, is one example.   I think Obama is more in the mold of a moderate Democrat, given what we have seen, which also fits his unifying message a lot better.

This post is so full of blind Obama hate that it's hard to even start. "Embracing homophobia"? "pandering to the religious"? "further to the right than Clinton?"

And which votes is Obama trying to "draw" away from Edwards? Last time I checked, Edwards doesn't have too many votes. Obama is mostly ignoring him, much like the media, and the voters (I actually like Edwards, don't take this as a cricism against him - it's just reality).

Please, calm down. We have 2 candidates (Edwards and Obama) who are incredibly liberal. Probably the two most liberal major candidates to run in our generation. Then we have Hillary, who has a mixed record...

The GOP does not  say the same thing?

There is nothing funnier than Obama supporters supporting what THEY MUST KNOW was a mistake.

The Cult comes to life.

The Social Security Reports are freely available online and as more or less a public service I have them all broken out at my website. 2007 Social Security Report There is no reason at all that we should be using current data points. For example the current figure for shortfall (Income Excluding Interest failing to match Cost) is 2017 and depletion 2041. Which would seem to represent a deterioration but actually represent a strong improvement from the 2006 Report. You have to get down to the fine detail to understand the changes.

" You are going to have to get the cash to make payouts from somewhere- in 2018.  And the sooner you address this problem, the less drastic are the possible solutions in the future."

How much cash? Is it a huge amount? Well now whether you express the initial shortfall in Current dollars (Table VI.F8) or in inflation adjusted Constant dollars (Table VI.F7) the numbers are not particularly scary. $30 billion current, $15 billion constant. As late as 2025 the constant dollar gap is still less than the projected 2008 cost of the war. This gap should it happen is easily financeable. Which is why opponents started using Infinite Future Horizon numbers with the 2003 Report, 75 year numbers were losing their scare component.

And the record shows that delay addressing this problem has actually resulted in a smaller problem going forward. Moreover if you take care to actually examine the numbers you will see that this trend is likely to continue, the needed 'solution' shrinking away perhaps eventually to nothing. The record does not support the 'Can't afford to wait position', the numbers suggest exactly the reverse.

Most people, even most people in policy positions don't have these numbers at hand, but we know that Obama has a person on staff that knows them full well, if in fact Leibman is on board as reported. That the campaign is allowing Obama to take this line given the well known numbers is pretty disturbing.

BTW you simply cannot trust the MSM on this. They simply refuse to do basic reporting on Social Security and have for a least a decade. The dates of shortfall and depletion have been moving and for the most part out. Someone should be asking the questions 'Why are they moving at all?' and 'Can this trend continue?' Well no one is even willing to go there.

...for political reasons I am perfectly willing to say that there is no crisis.

I guess I suck.

But really there is no crisis. It takes some poking around in the data tables and a real examination of the numbers projected over the next decade but it is increasingly likely that Social Security as currently configured is good for decades longer than projected and that Trust Fund redemption will not in fact start in 2023. Plausible models exist that show the principal in the Trust Fund never having to be paid back over the 75 year window.

I am not some naif straight off of Sunnybrook Farm, I have three years of Social Security diaries here and at dKos and a website entirely devoted to this. Social Security is not broke. At all.

(For the record I don't think you suck. After you analyze the actual numbers it turns out that your position is sound both from a policy and political perspective.)

HOWEVER, no synonyms for crisis are allowed either.