Social Security: Now Even More Financially Sound, Despite the Spin from the Fiscal Crisis Cassandras

Paul Krugman notes the latest good news on Social Security in the just-released annual trustees report:

... the key message is what has happened to the estimate of actuarial balance — the difference between projected outlays and projected revenues over the next 75 years. This is the thing that’s supposed to get steadily worse as time goes by, as the 75-year window contains ever fewer years in which the baby boomers are in the work force, paying payroll taxes, and ever more years when the boomers are out of the work force and collecting benefits.

In fact, however, the actuarial balance has been improving rather than worsening. It’s now better than it’s been since 1993. What this tells us is that projections made in the mid-to-late 1990s were, in the light of subsequent revisions, way too pessimistic.

Moral: Social Security’s financial problem is relatively minor. It doesn’t deserve the emphasis it receives from most pundits.

Meanwhile, Heritage and Brookings are getting together on Monday for an event premised on the crisis-mongering notion that Social Security is one of the "major drivers of escalating deficits." In addition to this slander of Social Security, the Brookings notice for the event includes this unintentionally funny line: "at this public event ... experts will present a new paper ... [authored by] a diverse group [that] includes experts affiliated with many different organizations who have found solid common ground." Here's the list of that diverse group with their major affiliations and ideological orientations:

Joseph Antos: conservative at AEI, Reagan Administration economist

Robert Bixby: executive director of Concord Foundation, funded by former Nixon Commerce Secretary and Blackstone Group founder Peter Petersen

Stuart Butler: conservative at Heritage Foundation

Paul Cullinan: researcher at Brookings Institution

Alison Fraser: conservative at Heritage Foundation

William Galston: fellow at Brookings, DLCer who worked in Clinton Administration and for presidential candidate John Anderson

Ron Haskins: fellow at Brookings, former Republican staffer in the House, also worked briefly for Bush II

Julia Isaacs: relatively new researcher at Brookings, previously at HHS

Maya MacGuineas: former Social Security adviser to McCain 2000 Presidential Campaign and Concord Center employee, chairperson of Centrists.org, currently at New America Foundation

Will Marshall: conservative Democrat and co-founder of DLC

Pietro Nivola: Brookings

Rudolph Penner: fellow at Urban Institute, previously at AEI

Robert Reischauer: president of Urban Institute, previously at Brookings, and director of CBO

Alice Rivlin: OMB during Clinton Administration, senior fellow at Brookings

Isabel Sawhill: fellow at Brookings, conservative Democrat, previously at Urban, OMB during Clinton Administration

Eugene Steuerle: senior fellow at Urban, previously at AEI, in Treasury Department during Reagan Administration

Ah! Just reading the list, can't you hear the unruly chorus, the diverse and representative voices of America in all its rainbow-colored and free-thinking glory!

You can't hear the glory? Well, ok, I guess this is basically a list of Republicans, conservative think tankers, conservative democrats from the Eisenhower-Nixon wing of the Democratic Party, and third-way types who think the third way is to be found somewhere in between a center that's already off-center and the far-out movement conservatism of the Heritage Foundation. (And let's not even mention the lack of racial and generational variety of the list, extreme even by DC's pale gray think tank standards). The only liberal-leaners on the list are Robert Reischauer—who's usually quite sensible so I'm not sure why he let himself get roped into this—and Alice Rivlin. The lack of diversity is even more notable when one considers who at Brookings didn't collaborate, including the Rubinistas at the Hamilton Project, and the eminent Henry Aaron, who recently concluded:

Apart from health care, currently legislated federal revenues suffice to cover all currently projected spending, including all Social Security and other entitlements. The United States confronts a public and private health care spending problem, not an entitlement crisis.

If the Heritage-Brookings-AEI crisis crew ever manages to find the common ground that Aaron is standing on, and stops trying to prop up the phony idea that we're in the midst of an entitlement crisis, they might be worth listening to. But don't hold your breath, the folks at AEI and Heritage are zealous conservative advocates, and way too politically savvy to make a concession that would undermine their movement's interests.