Social insecurity

As if Americans didn’t have enough scary evidence that out-of-control federal debt and the sputtering economy pose a grave threat to prosperity, consider this: Social Security is about to start spending the excess money it has collected over the past 20-plus years, during which workers paid more into the system than the system paid out in benefits.

This year, as the oldest of the baby boomers start collecting gold watches, Social Security is projected to pay $29 billion more in benefits than workers pay into the system.

This is the demographic shift long dreaded by those who wonder how Social Security will remain solvent through the years of the baby boomers’ retirement.

That’s because the extra money collected since the mid-1980s — about $2.5 trillion — has been spent on countless other government programs.

Now that the Social Security Administration needs that money for its original purpose, it seeks to cash in the IOUs by demanding payment from the U.S. Treasury. But the United States already is $12.6 trillion in debt and can only pay off the IOUs by borrowing even more, adding further to the country’s indebtedness.

This would be troubling under any circumstances, but with U.S. debt already too high and economic recovery only a hope, it’s frightening.

The United States isn’t going to default next week or next year, but the previously unthinkable grows nearer with every day the nation fails to change this disastrous course.

— The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch