Social Security solvency problems

• Social Security can keep paying all scheduled benefits for another 36 years, according to projections, but its annual surpluses run out in just a decade or so - highlighting the need for Washington to get serious about a comprehensive fix.
• The stakes can't be understated: Social Security, according to a recent study for the Economic Policy Institute, is the largest income source for two-thirds of those over 65.
• Trouble is, the president and fellow conservatives have been more serious about their political ends - more serious about changing a successful social insurance program than they are about saving it.
• First Mr. Bush pitched diverting some Social Security taxes into private accounts, thereby asking future retirees to trade guaranteed cuts in benefits for the chance to regain the money in stocks.
• This would turn Social Security into a welfare system, for which middle-class Americans increasingly have little taste.
• How convenient for those still trying to undo the New Deal.
• And with all this roundly rejected by Americans, conservatives in Congress last week came up with the worst plan yet: Do nothing to fix Social Security's shortfall, while diverting its surpluses - until they peter out in 2017 - to private accounts.
• If the goal here is to get the camel's nose under the tent, the cost would be high, the loss of $600 billion in surpluses that likely would be used to reduce federal budget deficits.
• And get this: It is being sold as a sort of "lock box" to prevent Social Security revenue from being drained off by federal deficit spending - a fantastic turn for the party whose irresponsible tax cuts and spending have led this nation in just five years from surpluses to record red ink.