On the recordFebruary 10, 2016
In 2011, this was the chart. I just want you to look. What is the direction? The trust fund was supposed to grow and grow and grow up until 2021. There was going to be more money there every year. This is what we were telling ourselves, telling the public, telling the financial markets just 5 years ago. Now take a look when we look at the new budget projection. And understand we went from saying these trust funds are going to grow. So when you and I first got here, I think the Social Security trust fund was supposed to survive to 2038, and now we have taken 8 or 9 years off that. This is the new number that just came out in the report, that, in 22 months, it starts to go negative and we start to dip into the principal balance. In 14 years--and you will see that in the next chart because in the next one I take it beyond the 10-year projection because we had to do our own calculations for the final 4 because they only give you 10 years when they do the projections--in 14 years, the trust fund is gone. Look, I know you have talked about how the trust fund works.
