Friday, February 05, 2010

Bailout Tsunami

clipped from hotair.com

Last month, we noted that Social Security had delivered its worst performance in decades.  Now, Allen Sloan warns investors at Yahoo Finance that the entire program has gone into the red — and will stay there.  Get ready, Sloan says, for the mother of all bailouts:

Don’t look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

This means that the federal government not only can’t rely on SocSec surpluses, which have been used to paper over budget deficits, it will have to increase the federal deficit to make benefit payments from now on.
Even if we had a federal government living within its means, this would be a crisis — but with the debt that Obama is accumulating, it’s a fiscal tsunami waiting to crest.