The "crisis" takes a step back

Bad news for the President and his "private" associates from the CBO. Social Security's timeline for destruction had just gotten a little bit longer:

The Social Security system will take in more money annually than it pays out in benefits until 2020, two years later than earlier estimated, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday in a modest change unlikely to alter the growing political debate over the program.

Congress' budget analysts also estimated the program's trust funds will be depleted in 2052, "meaning that beneficiaries will be able to count on receiving only 78 percent of their scheduled benefits beginning then.

"After the trust funds are exhausted, Social Security spending cannot exceed annual revenues," the analysts said. "As a consequence ... benefits paid will be 22 percent lower than the scheduled benefits."

In both cases, the CBO estimates are more optimistic than the most recent projections made by the Social Security Board of Trustees. In the annual report it issued last March, the board said annual income would fall behind benefit payments beginning in 2018, and the trust funds would be empty in 2042.

You read that right. The iceberg Social Security was heading for just got smaller as it moves farther into the future. Two years added until the trust fund dip, and ten years added to the solvency of the trust fund. That cannot bode well for the Bush "privatization" plan regardless of what anyone claims.

I wonder how long it will take the private account backers to get used to the new numbers?