Covering the release of the annual Medicare and Social Security trustees report for The Washington Post, Amy Goldstein wrote on August 6th:

Specifically, the new report says Medicare’s hospital trust fund will be able to pay all its bills until 2029, compared with last year’s forecast of 2017.
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The report predicts that the Social Security trust fund will have enough money until 2037, the same date as in last year’s forecast.

The Post’s economic reporters need to convey to readers that the Medicare and Social Security “trust funds” contain zero funds. This is not up for dispute. When those programs’ revenues … Continue Reading

In an otherwise fine piece of reporting on the continued flight of wordlwide investment into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds, The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin reports:

Perceptions inside the Beltway rest on this idea: Although the current large budget deficit is caused mainly by the weak economy and a short-term economic stimulus that will soon expire, in the longer run the government faces a vast unfunded burden, particularly tied to Medicare and Medicaid.

It is true that Medicare’s $37.9 trillion unfunded liability is a driver of long term U.S. deficit concerns, but one cannot ignore Social Security’s problems either.

In … Continue Reading

The March 31, Washington Post does a fairly responsible job today when discussing the Social Security trust fund and its implications for the federal budget. In an article entitled, “Recession Puts a Major Strain on Social Security Trust Fund,” reporter Lori Montgomery explains:

With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund’s annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — nearly a decade ahead of schedule — and

… Continue Reading