Comments on: Hot Air exclusive – CBO says Social Security to run in the red 2010 and 2011

By: No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » Another look at the mid-term Social Security crater

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:41:34 +0000

[…] in September, Ed Morrissey found, and I expanded upon, a dire look at the Social Security “Trust” Funds from the Congressional Budget Office […]

By: No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » Social Security not-so-slow-mo collapse, part (I lost count)

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:06:07 +0000

[…] to slightly-higher-than-projected revenues, it does not represent any meaningful improvement in the ugly projections for the future. That also was the worst 12-month performance since January 1993-December 1993, and the worst […]

By: No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » The Social Security crater continues

No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » The Social Security crater continues — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:34:18 +0000

[…] was originally going to append this to my post from the other day, but there are too many new items to […]

By: Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:36:33 +0000

Look, I don’t like taxes any more than the next guy, but is it at all possible that we are not allocating enough to handle the increased demands by social security? The choice is to send seniors to the bread lines, or adjust our spending upward to allow for the boomer’s peak and longer life spans, and then reduce them later to suit. Or we can just put us old fogies on the public dole some other way.

But worse than over-spending on a system that cares for our elderly is the corrupt giveaways of taxpayer assets to the special interests that fund the political elections. Perhaps if we eliminated that we could reduce taxes and at the same time resolve our SSI and health care problems.

Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net

By: BizzyBlog

BizzyBlog — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:13:30 +0000

[…] to future year collections, Morrissey points to work by “steveegg” at No Runny Eggs showing that tweaking CBO’s rather optimistic assumptions of payroll tax growth downward by […]

By: Daily Pundit » Uh Oh…

Daily Pundit » Uh Oh… — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:38:22 +0000

[…] Folks, do check out Steve Egg’s layout of the numbers. I still think SS can be “fixed,” but the fix might involve you having to live until […]

By: CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010-11 « Wintery Knight Blog

CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010-11 « Wintery Knight Blog — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:36:50 +0000

[…] out their update: Steve at No Runny Eggs, who has been keeping a very close eye on SSA, says that the CBO numbers project some eye-popping […]

By: The good news is, I’ll probably outlive Social Security. The bad news is… « The TrogloPundit

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:09:18 +0000

[…] Lots of charts and numbers and stuff at the link. And fellow Blogosphere’o'Cheeser Stevegg makes an appearance in an update! […]

By: steveegg

steveegg — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:59:55 +0000

In reply to MTF.

In reference to the first question, there are several different “bumps”:

– The bumps in January, April, June and September in what the CBO calls “revenues”, what SocSecurity calls “contributions”, and what everybody else calls the payroll tax are indeed due to those who file quarterly. Related to that, the huge spike in April, as well as the smaller spike in March, are due to those who should file quarterly but forget.
– The separate bumps in January, April, July and October are due to most of the taxed Social Security benefits hitting the “trust fund” those months.
– The semi-annual bumps in “interest” (June and December) are when the interest on the long-term bonds are compounded.

As for how that stacks up to the last 12 months figures are available, the 4 months that had a monthly primary surplus were Septmeber 2008, January 2009, March 2009 and April 2009. Notably, neither June 2009 (the tax-year/calendar-year 2009 2nd quarter for quarterly-filers) nor July 2009 had a monthly primary surplus.

In reference to the second question, those are fiscal years, which begin October 1 in the Federal world. I’m not going to hazard a guess on whether calendar-year 2009 will end up in the red, but I note that the CBO is suggesting that August and September will come in at a $14 billion primary deficit. That would mean October-December would have to come in at about a $21.5 billion primary deficit to put Social Security in the red for CY2009.

By: MTF

MTF — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:40:08 +0000

Thanks for the projection. A couple of questions:

1) am I right in assuming that the quarterly bumps in inflows are due to quarterly filers (self-employed)? Those are big numbers, almost so big that a slight decline in payments from those filers (whomever they are) would be bad news. Do we know who they are?

2) Do the funds follow a calendar year or a federal year, for accounting purposes? I ask because I was wondering what it would take to push the 2009 results into the red, and so how far we are through the year really matters. If it’s a calendar year and the 2009 year shows a decline of 3.495% instead of a decline of only .08%, then the “Trust Fund” looks like it could be in current deficit as early as this year. Either way, 2010 is staring us in the face (maybe as soon as next month, if the fund follows a federal accounting year).

Thanks for the work.

By: Hot Air » Blog Archive » Exclusive: CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010-11; Update: Too much sunny optimism at CBO?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:35:22 +0000

[…] II: Steve at No Runny Eggs, who has been keeping a very close eye on SSA, says that the CBO numbers project some eye-popping […]