George Will gets facts wrong on Social Security.

[Eric J in MN]

Email the ombudsman of the Washington Post and ask him to please have George Will issue a correction to his op-ed "Lindsey Graham's Good Idea."

George Will's facts are wrong.

Social Security will not pay out more than it takes in
during the year 2011.

Be polite to the ombudsman, since we're asking for his help:
[e-mail]


Include a link to this blog-article.

From The Daily Howler:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh031605.shtml

On Sunday, Will made a plainly inaccurate claim in his
Washington Post op-ed column. He said Social Security
would be running shortfalls as early as the year 2012:

===============================================
WILL (3/13/05): Today the government is partially
funded by that surplus of Social Security tax revenue
over outlays, a fact disguised by politicians talking
rot about Social Security being an "insurance" program
with a "trust fund" in a "lock box." But between 2011
and 2016, Social Security outlays will exceed revenue
by $32 billion, and the sums will rapidly increase
during the cascading retirements of baby boomers.
==============================================
Say what? If you know anything at all about the SS
debate, you know Will’s claim is inaccurate. (See
Atrios here, for example.) Everyone has read, a
thousand times, the current projection of the SS
trustees—the payroll tax will produce an annual
surplus through the year 2018. (The CBO says 2020.) So
where did Will get this oddball claim; why did he
claim that SS will run a $32 billion shortfall between
2011 and 2016? Simple—Will got hustled by Senator
Gregg. So did Hiatt, Will’s know-nothing editor.

Where did Will get this laughable claim? Easy—he
misread a phony Roll Call piece by the dissembling
senator. Like so many other Republicans, Gregg was
looking for a way to pretend that Social Security’s
day of reckoning was disturbingly near at hand.
According to the CBO, Social Security can pay full
benefits through the year 2052. But it’s hard to get
people worked up about that, so fakers like Gregg keep
torturing facts to produce a sense of impending
disaster. That’s what Gregg did in his column in last
Monday’s Roll Call. Six days later, he hauled in Will
and Hiatt.

In Roll Call, Gregg recorded the size of the surplus
SS is now producing. “This year the government will
collect $78 billion more in Social Security taxes than
we will pay in benefits,” he correctly noted. And not
only that: “The surplus is expected to expand to $88
billion in 2006, $99 billion in 2007 and so on.” The
brilliant solon also noted that the annual surplus
would “peak at $116 billion in 2011.” And then he
recorded the annual surpluses which will obtain after
that:
=====================================================
GREGG (3/7/05): At that point, the surplus begins to
diminish for the first time, falling to $113 billion
in 2012, $106 billion in 2013 and so on down to $85
billion in 2015 and accelerating downward every year
thereafter.
==================================================
The surplus will be getting smaller each year—but duh!
At this point, it will still be a surplus! In 2015,
the surplus will be $85 billion, which is bigger than
the surplus this year! But Gregg wanted to produce a
sense of disaster. So that’s when he started to
torture his facts to produce a disturbing conclusion

[bushisanidiot]

1. George Will is on AWOL Bush's payroll. He takes dictation from Rove

while little George sits on karl's knee.

[no name no slogan]

2. My wife saw that, too. George Will is full of piffle.

George Will believes he's the worlds' intellectual superior because he knows how to use a thesaurus. Unfortunately, it makes his commentary damn near unreadable.

This is suprising from him, unfortunately.

[TWiley]

3. George Will has his head firmly up his ass on most issues.

Including the topic of Social Security reform.