To: Neocon who wrote (17077 ) 11/21/2002 2:34:10 PM From: Steve Dietrich Read Replies (2) | Respond to As i told you, the President's Commission claims SS is in trouble starting 2016 (btw i was wrong in an earlier post where i said that date was 2006.). You can read it here:csss.gov Social Security Cash Deficits are Projected to Begin in 2016. Social Security’s primary source of revenue is a 12.4 percent payroll tax applied to the covered earnings of wage earners. Social Security also receives money from the taxation of Social Security benefits. In 2016, under current projections, Social Security will collect less in tax revenues than it has committed to pay out in benefits. When that happens, the Social Security Trust Fund will still show a positive balance. But the Trust Fund holds not accumulated reserves of wealth but debt obligations that future taxpayers will be asked to redeem. Whether the balance in the Trust Fund is $5 trillion or zero, to make the current system sustainable the nation faces identical choices: either raise taxes, reduce benefits, decrease other government spending, or increase borrowing from the public. When Social Security deficits begin in 2016, annual cash shortfalls will be relatively small and could possibly be financed through surpluses in the rest of the government’s budget. But these annual cash deficits will eventually grow very large: $194 billion in 2025, $271 billion in 2030, and $318 billion in 2035 (in 2001 dollars).4 The cost of paying benefits will rise from 10.5 percent of taxable earnings today to almost 18 percent in 2035. The effects of these pressures on beneficiaries and taxpayers will be shown on subsequent pages.
