Factcheck.org exposes latest Bush/Cheney Soc Sec $11T Infinite defict lie

[papau]

http://www.factcheck.org/article302.html

THE BUSH/CHENEY $11T SHORTFALL IN SOCIAL SECURITY "IF NOTHING IS DONE TO FIX SYSTEM NOW" IS OVER THE "INFINITE FUTURE" - OVER THE NEXT 75 YEARS THE SHORTFALL IS A $3.7TRILLION PRESENT VALUE- AND THIS IS UNDER THE INTERMEDIATE PROJECTION WITH 1.6% GDP GROWTH - THE MORE REASONABLE SSA PROJECTION WITH A BIT HIGHER GDP GROWTH SHOWS NO DEFICIT - INDEED A SURPLUS - SO ARE WE OVERPAYING?

President Bush Remarks at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, January 11, 2005: Bush: "Now, I readily concede some would say, well, it's not bankrupt yet; why don't we wait until it's bankrupt? The problem with that notion is that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to fix. You realize that this system of ours is going to be short the difference between obligations and money coming in, by about $11 trillion, unless we act. And that's an issue. That's trillion with a "T."

Vice President Cheney -January 13 speech at Catholic University - and his bald face partial truth lie “Again, the projected shortfall in Social Security exceeds $10 trillion.”

Cheney: "Another argument against Social Security reform with voluntary personal accounts is that the so-called transition costs would be too high. Yet focusing merely on transition costs is to overlook the greater cost of doing nothing. Again, the projected shortfall in Social Security exceeds $10 trillion; that figure is nearly twice the combined wages and salaries of every single working American last year. There will be no -- there will be costs no matter what we decide."
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from factcheck: "While the…information is useful, it is difficult to understand. The $10.5 trillion is a large figure, but it needs to be seen in the context of the present value of taxable payroll over the infinite horizon, which is on the order of $275 trillion.

Later, in the 2004 report issued last March, the Trustees updated those figures to a $10.4 trillion deficit and a $295.5 trillion taxable payroll.

This means that for the system to be completely solvent over the next 75 years, without adjusting benefits, payroll taxes would have to go up to 14.2 percent immediately.

And to be solvent for the "infinite future," the $10.4 trillion shortfall equals 3.5 percent of taxable payroll, or a tax increase to15.9 percent of wages.


American Academy of Actuaries: …The new measures of the unfunded obligations included in the 2003 report provide little if any useful information about the program’s long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic, and actuarial aspects of the program’s finances into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated.

The Academy states that there is already much uncertainty using 75-year projections, and that extending estimates into the infinite future only increases that uncertainty, producing results that "are of limited value to policymakers.” They point out that changes which took place over the last 75 years were unforeseeable to actuaries in 1928, such as the Great Depression or the baby boom, and therefore have no reason to doubt that unforeseeable changes will not occur in the future.

Demographic and economic assumptions have always been a controversial issue among demographers predicting the long-term sustainability of Social Security. Significant advances in life expectancy have taken place over the last century, which exert more pressure on the system's finances as people live longer lives. Whether future mortality rates will continue to slow or increase with medical technology, the Academy of Actuaries argues that the inconsistencies which arise from such long-range assumptions are "inevitable" when making projections over the course of infinity. For this reason, they conclude that the infinite-horizon measurement is a “detriment” to the Trustees Report. They write:

American Academy of Actuaries: Thus, we believe that including these values in the Trustees Report is unnecessary and is, on balance, a detriment to the Trustees’ charge to provide a meaningful and balanced presentation of the financial status of the program."



Table IV.B7.- http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/IV_LRest.html#wp267528 -Unfunded OASDI Obligations for 1935 (Program Inception) Through the Infinite Horizon, "THE 2004 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL OLD-AGE AND SURVIVORS INSURANCE AND DISABILITY INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS," 23 March 2004: 59.

Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods (2003), http://www.ssab.gov/NEW/documents/2003TechnicalPanelRept.pdf Report to the Social Security Advisory Board. Washington, D.C., October 2003.

[judy]

1. Well, even without factcheck,

we know that there was a memo saying that "we should push the doomsday idea to sell our SS plan".

So, we know they are lying.
If the SS crisis was real, they just would say: "We need to do all we can to save SS, and we need to reassure the people that they have nothing to fear".

[papau]

2. True - now we need to get the media to want to tell the truth.

:-)