Jim Kolbe: “I do want to take a few moments to talk about this particular chart up here because I think it expresses better than…”

“I do want to take a few moments to talk about this particular chart up here because I think it expresses better than anything I could say verbally what the nature of the problem is that we are facing. Going back, thinking back to the last chart where we talked about how the fewer numbers of people are paying the taxes to support the beneficiaries, the people getting the benefits, this illustrates exactly what that means in terms of the cash that is coming into the Social Security trust fund. The reforms, the changes that were made in 1983 went a long way towards fixing Social Security in the short and the median term; but for the long term, it just kicked the problem down the road. It did not make a permanent fix to it. It just postponed the day of reckoning, postponed the day of reckoning because it increased the taxes. And gradually we are in the process now of raising the retirement age. It made some other things. So since the late 1980s and early 1990s, we have been collecting more in revenues from Social Security tax than we have been paying out in benefits. That means the Social Security trust fund has been reaping this windfall, if you will.”