Complete with charts that make the two social-welfare programs look like skyscrapers, the old-news story reports that their financial condition has deteriorated "in part because of the recession" and that the Social Security trust fund "will be exhausted" in 2037, "four years earlier than expected."

By that time, I'm going to be one really pissed-off 90-year-old.

Yes, it's a problem, but who's got memory loss here? The Times and other mainstream media. A little perspective, please. They don't mention that the non-9/11 defense budget has been growing at a faster rate than these "entitlement" programs, as some of us noted in March. Nor do they point out, as many of us did last month, that there's a bigger picture here. See "The Red Ink of a Greyer Future" for demographic details.

Not to mention that just as much of a long-term threat to the budget as a Social Security shortfall is the specter that the Bush regime's tax cuts for the rich will remain in place — despite Barack Obama's plans. As Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says about the impact of Social Security and Medicare on the federal budget:

Greenstein also notes that the 2037 date for exhaustion of Social Security money is not a new prediction; it was also the date predicted in 2000 by the trustees of the SS monies.