White House Refuses To Consider Social Security's Role in Debt, Deficits

It gets more unaffordable by the year

As fiscal-cliff negotiations heated up, the White House signaled it wouldn't give ground on Social Security because, as press secretary Jay Carney said, it "is not currently a driver of the deficit. That's an economic fact."

Well, to paraphrase former Democratic Sen. Patrick Moynihan, facts are not an entitlement and the facts say otherwise — even more so in the wake of the fiscal-cliff tax hike.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next decade Social Security's annual cash deficit will rise by nearly $100 billion, reaching $155 billion a year. The cost of servicing the extra public debt tied to cashing in $1 trillion worth of Social Security's intragovernmental IOUs over the 10 years would add $40 billion to the deficit in 2022 alone, an IBD analysis finds.