Bush Playing Politics With Social Security...Again

What a shocker -- just as Bush's plan to dismantle Social Security faces bleak poll numbers and cynicism from average voters around the country, Treasury Secretary John Snow and the trustees for SS and Medicare suddenly decide to issue a new report saying the crisis is even worse than they feared. Yep, SS is going to start paying out more than it takes in come 2017, instead of 2018 and the reserves (depleted by Bush) will run out in 2041 instead of 2042. One year is a tweak in far-future projections, not a dramatic new development.

The NYT does say the trustees are "not entirely devoid of politics." But was this report scheduled? How and why did the numbers change (and not very dramatically)? Did new numbers come to light or did they just add them up differently to force a headline about an increasing "crisis?" Thanks to Bush having Social Security officials play partisan politics by stumping for his changes on the taxpayer's money, it's hard to trust anything coming out of any branch of the government without a big grain of salt.