From Daily Kos: 7/22/11

Funny how this [Social Security] Surplus story so quickly fell off the National radar screen,

Apparently the Social Security Trust Fund facts, have left the building ...

Only to be replaced by the sky-is-falling, slash everything, Austerity Chicken Hawks, in their place ..

Senator Bernie Sanders: 3/15/11:

Today on ABC's Top Line, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dismissed the talk of Social Security going broke as "total nonsense" and said, "Social security has a $2.6 trillion surplus. Could pay out every benefit owed for the next 26 years," he said. "It is not going bankrupt and it is not going broke."

Headline in AOL's Daily Finance blog: 8/21/11:

Social Security Disability Payments May Cease in 2017

The Congressional Budget Office has come out with a new analysis that says the ability of the Social Security disability fund to make payments may end in 2017. The estimates depend, of course, to some extent on the economy. The CBO's 2011 Long-Term Projections for Social Security reports that "as more members of the baby-boom generation (that is, people born between 1946 and 1964) enter retirement, outlays will increase relative to the size of the economy, whereas tax revenues will remain at an almost constant share of the economy. As a result, the shortfall (in the Disability Insurance (DI)) fund will begin to grow around 2017. The fund that provides Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) may not be able to make payments after 2040.

Laid off workers are also putting financial pressure on disability insurance as well. Some Americans are allowed to make use of the benefits from both of the Social Security programs which worsens the financing problem further. The total number of people who receive some kind of payment from the Social Security funds totals 56 million now. The CBO points out that this year, "Social Security's outlays will total $733 billion, one-fifth of the federal budget; OASI payments will account for about 82 percent of those outlays, and DI "payments, about 18 percent."

Nobody saw this coming right? Complete surprise. Who woulda thunk it.

Color me an "Austerity Chicken-Hawk" but maybe - just maybe - we should perhaps, sort of, you know, kind of do something about it? Like we could have in 2007. As we should have in the debt ceiling debate.

The only time Democrats talk about social security is either to brag about inventing it or use it to frighten the beejeebees out of old folks with tales of how Republicans are going to break into their homes and steal their checks. On how to fix the monster, they are silent.

Lots of silent Democrats on the Hill today.