No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for July 13th, 2010

Speaking of SocSecurity, the preliminary June 2010 update

The Treasury released its June 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement, and things just keep on getting worse for Social Security. Do bear in mind these numbers are still preliminary because the Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary hasn’t finalized them yet, but let’s run with them.

Overall

I really should not do the combined numbers anymore because the two “trust funds” are separate entities, but since everybody else still does them, I’ll briefly touch on it. They took in a total of $56,808 million in taxes, received $59,072 million in “interest” (because this is one of the two times interest is credited to the entire holdings), and paid out $63,308 in expenses. That left a gross increase in assets of $52,572 million (45.37% of total revene) and a primary (cash) decease in assets of $6,500 million (-11.44% of tax revenue). The 12-month gross surplus was $90,183 million, while the 12-month primary deficit was $28,260 million.

DI “Trust Fund”

The Disability Insurance “Trust Fund” had $8,249 million in taxes, $4,706 million in interest, and $11,018 million of outgo. That netted a monthly overall surplus of $1,778 million (worst June since 1994) or 14.95% of total revenue (also the worst June since 1994), and a monthly primary deficit of $2,769 million (5th-worst month, outside the “double-payment” month of August 1990, since monthly recurds were kept starting in 1987) or -33.57% of tax revenue (9th-worst “not-screwy” month since monthly records were kept).

The 12-month overall deficit was $18,725 million (worst since monthly records were kept) or -17.68% of total revenue (also worst since monthly records were kept). That meant that the “trust fund” lost 8.78% of its value over the past 12 months.

The 12-month primary deficit was $28,708 million (worst since monthly records were kept) or -29.93% of tax revenue (also worst since monthly records were kept). Put another way, tax revenues only covered just under 77% of the costs of the DI program.

OASI “Trust Fund”

The Old-Age and Survivors “Trust Fund” had $50,635 $48,559 million in taxes, $54,366 million in interest, and $52,290 million of outgo. That netted a monthly overall surplus of $54,366 million (worst June since 1994) or 49.20% of total revenue (worst June since 1999, prior to the latest realignment of the FICA/SECA taxes between the two “trust funds”), and a monthly primary deficit of $3,731 million (4th-worst month, outside the “double-payment” month of August 1990 and the transfer of revenues to the DI “Trust Fund” in November 1994, since monthly records were kept) or -7.68% of tax revenue (7th-worst “non-screwy” month since monthly records were kept).

The 12-month overall surplus was $108,910 million (worst since 9/1998-8/1999) or 15.93% of total revenue (worst since 5/1996-4/1997). Of note, the earlier dates were when less of the FICA/SECA tax was being directed to the OASI “Trust Fund” than currently.

The 12-month primary surplus was $375 million (worst outside the effects of the November 1994 transfer of revenues to the DI “Trust Fund”) or 0.07% of tax revenues (again the worst outside the effects of the November 1994 transfer of revenues to the DI “Trust Fund”). Of note, the two worse 12-month periods for the OASI saw a change of +$112 million (+0.04% of tax revenue) between 10/1994 and 9/1995 and -$825 million (-0.28% of tax revenue) between 11/1994 and 10/1995 due to that transfer to save the DI “Trust Fund”.

Tax revenues keep on sliding

The conditions of the “Trust Funds” are bad enough. However, that’s not the worst of the immediate news. Based on what the taxes taken in for the purposes of Social Security (FICA, SECA, and taxation of benefits) had been for the first 5 months of this year compared to the first 5 months of last year, Social Security tax revenues should have been around $58,540 million, or about 4.63% lower than the $61,383 million collected in June 2009. Instead, only $56,808 million came in to Social Security’s coffers in June 2010, a 7.45% drop from June 2009. That also was an overestimation of 2.96% on my part.

On the bright side, the outgo of $63,308 million was slightly less than my estimate of $63,984 million. I missed it by a mere 1.06%.

Revisions/extensions (6:36 pm 7/13/2010) – Corrected the characterization of the 12-month OASI primary change. It’s not until this month that it will go into the red. Also, added the “Economy Held Hostage” category that Shoebox started up earlier today.

R&E part 2 (8:18 pm 7/14/2010) – I somehow listed my spreadsheet estimate of taxes taken into the OASI fund instead of the Treasury figures. Sorry about that.

Economy Held Hostage – More Evidence

The hits, they just keep a coming….

and finally….

The White house is trying to ease tensions with business.  While I’m not in the habit of providing my consultations for free, I will make this one exception.  President Obama, the solution is easy.  Businesses of all sizes want you to get off their backs and quit making up new regulations by the minute.  If you abide by those 2 simple rules, they’ll be OK.

Tuesday Hot Read – Peter Ferrera’s “Are Overdue Reports Concealing ObamaCare Impact On Medicare?”

by @ 13:54. Filed under Social Security crater.

(H/T – Tom Blumer)

Last week, Peter Ferrera wondered in an Investor’s Business Daily op-ed where the already-late Social Security/Medicare Trustees’ Report is. As of a few minutes ago, it’s still not available.

Ferrera hits a multitude of topics, one of which I’ll focus on here:

The administration is trying to delay the report until mid-August, when it’s hoping the country will be on vacation and won’t notice. Or maybe the delay is because the White House is trying to bludgeon the chief actuaries for Medicare and Social Security into fudging the numbers.

Those chief actuaries are dedicated, career professionals who have worked their way up the bureaucracy over decades.

During the Reagan administration, the congressional Democrat majorities and the New York Times made clear to us that tampering with the work of the government’s career professionals, let alone the career number crunchers, would be grounds for impeachment.

I’m not certain the rule of law applies to this administration, where the Justice Department cites “payback time” as its reason for not prosecuting Black Panther Voting Rights Act violations.

Point of order – while the report is done by the career actuaries, they’re signed by the political masters, five of whom are hand-picked by Obama (the Secretaries of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services, and two Public Trustees, whose positions were vacant as of last year). I’m not taking bets on which scenario is actually happening because an objective view of either program, especially Social Security, would show that things are a lot worse than they thought just last year.

Take one down, ship to the Congo…

by @ 10:31. Filed under Energy, Politics - National.

The re-issuance of the “temporary” moratorium on deepwater drilling has forced Diamond Offshore to send a second rig packing, this time to the Congo. Unlike the Ocean Endeavor, which likely will never be back in the Gulf of Mexico, the Ocean Confidence might be back after 3 years in the Congo for a year, but only if the ban on deepwater drilling is lifted.

WISN-AM’s Jay Weber said on his show this morning that he believes that ban will never be lifted while Teh Won is in office. The fact that the Ocean Confidence will be gone for a minimum of 3 years shows Diamond Offshore believes the same.

Give us freedom in our health care, says…

by @ 10:05. Filed under Health Care Reform, Politics - National.

(H/T – Breitbart via Michelle Moore)

…Great Britain.

It truly is amazing how as we descend to what the British have suffered through, they’re looking for ways to climb out of that hole.

[No Runny Eggs is proudly powered by WordPress.]