Dean Baker has a thorough debunking of the Washington Post front page story on the 'Social Security Crisis'. A sample:
The article makes great efforts to confuse readers about the status of the trust fund. It tells readers:As ever, Krugman points out the bait and switch with great clarity:
"The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing."
What you can’t do is insist that the trust fund is meaningless, because SS is just part of the budget, then claim that some crisis arises when receipts fall short of payments, because SS is a standalone program. Yet that’s exactly what the WaPo claims.This is how the GOP scheme was meant to work all along: First they passed tax cuts for the 1% and now when it comes time to pay for it the only thing they will allow to be put on the table is our pensions.
