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.
