Claiming that "something needs to be done--and fast" to save Social Security, Parade magazine's Gary Weiss (11/22/09) suggests a downside to the idea of raising the ceiling on taxed income, so that income above the current $106,800 would be subject to the Social Security tax: "Raising the cap is popular among Social Security reformers but would increase the tax burden on the middle class, since more of their income would be subject to the tax. " (By contrast, "Raising the payroll tax rate would disproportionately affect lower-income workers.")

According to the Census Bureau, less than 5 percent of individuals over the age of 15 in the U.S. have incomes exceeding $100,000 a year.  That's a peculiar definition of "the middle class."

If Weiss truly believes that "experts agree that the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to solve the system’s financial ills," he ought to read Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot's Social Security: The Phony Crisis.

Yesterday the Social Security and Medicare trustees' reports were released. This annual ritual often gives reporters a chance to exaggerate the long-term problems of the Social Security system.  This year, the news was more or less what folks were expecting: By the trustees' forecasting, Social Security's trust fund will be depleted in 2037, while Medicare's hospital fund will run out of money in 2017.

Somehow, the Washington Post decided that Social Security was the real concern--its page-one story is headlined "Alarm Sounded on Social Security."

The lead rings the same bells:

The financial health of the Social Security system has eroded more sharply in the past year than at any time since the mid-1990s, according to a government forecast that ratchets up pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to stabilize the retirement system that keeps many older Americans out of poverty.

Much less attention is given to Medicare, which the Post does tell us deep in the piece "remains the more urgent problem." The paper sure has a funny way of showing its urgent concern, though.

As FAIR noted, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan tried to provide some perspective about Social Security and Medicare two years ago. When NBC's Tim Russert asked him about the health of Social Security and Medicare, Greenspan said that Social Security's problems were minor. Economist and former Social Security trustee Robert Reich writes, "Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one."

The Washington Post, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, are sending a very different message.  As Dean Baker has documented for some time, the paper just seems to have something against the program.

Long a critic of the Washington Post's habit of pushing of "its editorial position in the news section" when operating as "a strong proponent of reducing Social Security benefits," Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/31/09) has a new example of what he dubs the Post's "Jihad Against Social Security":

In keeping with this practice, it headlined an article today, "Recession Puts a Major Strain on Social Security Trust Fund." The article refers to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects that annual tax revenue will be nearly in balance with benefit payments for the next several years. Previous projections had shown large surpluses.

While those seeking to cut Social Security benefits are highlighting these new projections, in reality they have very little significance for the program. Under the law, Social Security benefits are paid out of its trust fund. This trust fund has accumulated a surplus of almost $2.5 trillion. The lower projected surpluses for the next few years will have some impact (if the projections prove correct) on the date at which the fund is projected to be depleted, but the projected depletion date will almost certainly be beyond 2040, even after CBO adjusts its numbers for the downturn.

Spying what "presumably... would be an important factor in any debate over reducing benefits," Baker notes that, "remarkably, this piece alludes to plans to cut benefits without ever noting that older workers and retirees have just lost close to $15 trillion in wealth due to the collapse of the housing bubble and the plunge in the stock market."

Media Matters (2/24/09) catches AP reporter Liz Sidoti garbling Barack Obama's position on entitlements:

He called the long-term solvency of Social Security "the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far" and said reforming healthcare, including burgeoning entitlement programs, was a huge priority.

What Obama actually said was:

In the coming years, we'll be forced to make more tough choices and do much more to address our long-term challenges, from the rising cost of healthcare that Peter [Orszag, Office of Management and Budget director] described, which is the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far, to the long-term solvency of Social Security.

In other words, healthcare is by far the single most pressing fiscal challenge--not Social Security.

What's surprising is not that a reporter would misunderstand a speech--Obama's phrasing could be a little bit confusing, I guess--but that anyone who follows politics for a living wouldn't know that healthcare is a bigger problem than Social Security. Maybe they should pay less attention to corporate media.

Jackie Calmes reports in the New York Times (2/23/09):

The president signaled in his campaign that he would support addressing the retirement system’s looming financing shortfall, in part by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000. But that would ignite intense opposition from Republicans, especially with the economy deep in recession.

Liberal Democrats are already serving notice that they will be equally vehement in opposing any reductions in scheduled benefits for future retirees. But any solution, budget analysts said, must include a mix of both approaches, though current beneficiaries would see no change.

Really?  Budget analysts said it was impossible to balance Social Security's books without tax increases and benefit cuts?  That's odd, considering that Social Security's 75-year shortfall amounts to about 1/300th of projected GDP.  Were these the same budget analysts who described a system that is projected to need help paying its obligations starting in 2041 as having a "looming financing shortfall"?

A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (2/8/09) quotes from yet another "Time magazine article about Larry Summers and how incredibly brilliant he is":

Perhaps as early as March, they'll launch their biggest lift with the beginnings of a plan to reform Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that, even before the economy collapsed, were threatening the Treasury with bankruptcy.... When Obama unveils his annual budget in late February or March, Summers promises that the president "is going to describe the kinds of approaches he wants to take to the entitlement problems that have been ignored for a long time." Some options might include delaying retirement, stretching benefits and lifting the cap on taxable earnings....

On that front, Republicans could come to Obama's rescue. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has told Obama in person that his party favors entitlement reform and would work for passage if both parties shared the risk.

That's right, one of the geniuses largely responsible for the formation of our current economic crisis is being lauded by Time--and so many other corporate outlets--for alarmist Social Security misinformation thoroughly debunked for years now. Or, as Schwarz notes in his usual pithy way: "It really required a Democratic president full of hope and change to cut Social Security."

Yesterday the New York Times reported on the status of a new PBS news program Worldfocus. Amidst budget cuts at the New York station where it originates, the program has received some unusual financial support--a $1 million grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. What does the funder expect to get out of it? The Times reported that

the foundation expected Worldfocus to produce reports examining how other countries have dealt with the challenges facing the United States, like healthcare and Social Security reform.

The head of the foundation, David Walker, added that the show will maintain "total control over the content."
That's pretty standard language; what the Times should have explained is that the Peterson Foundation has for years specialized in scare-mongering over the future of Social Security and warning against the perils of deficit spending.

Thus, the public broadcaster is taking funds to cover a set of issues from an institution that spends its money advocating a specific political agenda on those issues. Is this OK at PBS? The answer would seem to be yes; over the years FAIR has documented the network's conflict-of-interest double standard.