On the recordFebruary 10, 2016
Right. Right now. My calculations are we shortened the life of Social Security's trust fund by about 13 months when we did that. I don't think you voted for it. I don't think I did. I know I didn't. Now we have to deal with the realities of what that meant. As we were looking before, what happens when you are not achieving the economic growth that is required? All of a sudden, you see numbers like this. And this is stunning. When you are talking about a huge trust fund, this should not be happening. This is to give you a sense of how dramatic the problem is out there in this economy. I know we are happy talking. It is an election year and President Obama needs to sort of tell a story of how wonderful it is, but it isn't showing up on the map. So this last August, the trustees of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security--they all do their individual reports. The Social Security trustee said interest income and tax revenues would cover the payments going out the door on Social Security until 2022, except for the small problem of, somehow between August and 3 weeks ago when we got this new updated report, it is down to 2018. Now, all of a sudden, Social Security goes negative, meaning it doesn't have enough revenues to cover its obligations. So the way we were doing the math is, in 20 to 22 months, Social Security is going to have to start reaching over and cash in some of its bonds.…
