What Happened to the Lockbox?

(Chart nobody understands)

When Al Gore was running for President, Saturday Night Live did a spoofed debate with the Vice president talking about how he would put Social Security and Medicare payroll deductions in a lockbox for safekeeping. His character, played by Darrell Hammond, said, “May I just say that in my plan, the "lock-box" would be used only for Social Security and Medicare. It would have two different locks. Now, one of the keys to the "lockbox" would be kept by the President; the other key would be sealed in a small, metal container and placed under the bumper of the Senate Majority Leader's car.” In retrospect, after reading the 2010 Annual Report of the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, it would have been a good plan.

When the report was published last August, the group predicted that the main Social Security program, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (OASI,) would not be exhausted until 2018. For fiscal 2010 they predicted that the payments for the OASI fund would be $580 billion, and receipts about $540 billion. The fund was expected to be $40 billion short, the first deficit since 1983. Wrong! The final deficit actually came in at $79 billion—twice the prediction. Whose calculator had a bad battery when figuring the numbers?

On the positive side, their estimate for total SSA income in 2010 (which included both Social Security payroll taxes and interest paid by the Treasury on the Social Security Trust Funds) was $791 billion – but the actual total income was $741 billion (tax receipts of $631 billion plus interest income of about $110 billion). So they made a mistake of predicting receipts by $50 billion!

Did the SSA accountants attend Chicago Public schools? How else can one explain two such huge mistakes?

I pay Social Security taxes every year, even though I have already maxed out on what benefits I would receive. I am paying so everyone currently on SS can get their monthly check. But our current contributions are not high enough to fund the payments! Help!

So simply either the payroll deduction percentage will rise or the U.S. Treasury will have to keep borrowing more money to fund the deficit. Again, help!

Maybe Al Gore’s wanting a lockbox was not that far off the mark. He had some other good government ideas that he shared at a 2000 Al Smith dinner. He said, “My plan to put Social Security in an ironclad lockbox has gotten a lot of attention recently, and I'm glad about that. But I'm afraid that it's overshadowing some vitally important proposals. For instance, I'll put Medicaid in a walk-in closet. I'll put the Community Reinvestment Act in a secured gym locker. I'll put NASA funding in a hermetically sealed Ziploc bag.”

I would like to tell Gore where I think the administration should put the Healthcare Plan but I am too much of a lady!