There was an excellent op ed in Wall Street Journal (1/20/05) written by Treasurey Secretary Snow on social security. Mirrored some of the comments found in our own posting on the subject. Below are some excerpts from Secretary Snow’s piece:

Quoting the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan “Some of us are Republicans and some are Democrats: some are liberals and some are conservatives….Before we proceed, can we agree to get the facts first and only after we have the facts bring our political views into play”?

With these wise words in mind, Mr. Snow lays out the facts:

1. The system is not financially sustainable.

2. Every year we wait, it gets worse. Right now the deficit forecast is $10 trillion and the problem grows $600 billion every year.

3. If something doesn’t change to the way that we fund and pay out Social Security, then it will have to come out of the general federal tax revenues leading to significant higher taxes, benefit cuts or cutting other federal spending.

4. In the 50’s, when the system was young, we had 16 workers paying into the system for every 1 person collecting. Today, that 3.3 to 1. By the time today’s workers retire, it will be 2:1.

Do the math, there will simply not be enough money coming in to sustain the system. It will be bankrupt by 2042. Pick your poision: cutting benefits, moving eligibility dates back, personal investment accounts, or something else, but the clock is ticking.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 9:47 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.