These guys will not quit it with the state propaganda! (Via American Street) Now there is a new government-run website, “strengtheningsocialsecurity.gov”, and it reads like this:

In 2018, just 13 years from now, the government will begin to pay out more in Social Security benefits than it collects in payroll taxes – and shortfalls then will grow larger with each passing year.

By the year 2027, the government will need to come up with an extra $200 billion a year to keep the system afloat.

By 2033, the annual shortfall will be more than $300 billion a year.

By 2042, when workers in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt.

This would be frightening, if only it were not a complete lie.

As we’ve explained many times, Social Security will not be “bankrupt” in 2042. In fact, that is the date when Social Security is predicted (assuming rather gloomy growth) to first run a shortfall. The shortfall in that projection will still pay about 80% of planned benefits, which is more than current retirees receive today.

What this state-run website fails to mention is that Social Security will have built up a Trust Fund by 2018. Workers have been paying extra for the last 20 years to prepare for the retirement of Baby Boomers – but according to this taxpayer-funded campaign website, that was all a joke.

Will the government have to “come up with” the money to repay the Treasury bonds that the Social Security Trust Fund has been invested in? The answer is no, or at least no more than we have to “come up with” the money to pay for Bush’s massive tax cuts or “come up with” the money to pay for building up the military. In other words, it’s a matter of the solvency of Bush’s budget, not the solvency of Social Security.

I’ll bet you’re wondering how this online propaganda proposes to “strengthen Social Security.” In fact, it offers zero proposals! Are you surprised? I’m not. Instead, the site echoes our Dear Leader an offers a “solution” to a different “crisis.” Privatization does not “strengthen” the finances of Social Security at all – instead, it phases out the old system. But the “insolvency” remains. The only “crisis” the private accounts “solve” is the “crisis” of having the most popular and effective government program in history.

Best of all, [private accounts] would replace the empty promises of the current system with real assets of ownership.

Our Dear Leader says Social Security is an “empty promise.” It’s a promise we’ve kept for seventy years, and it will take more than a propaganda website for us to be tricked into breaking it.