Wait... what?

Powerline claims to point a lie by Molly Ivins:

Given all of those epithets, one would think Ivins would be careful to get her own facts straight. Nope. She writes:

President Bush says "the crisis is now" and Social Security will go into the red as of 2018. Eeek, just 13 years from now -- we might actually live that long. Except ... nobody else says that. The Social Security trustees, paid to be professional gloom-mongers on this subject, say it's good until 2042, and the conservative estimate by the Congressional Budget Office is 2052 -- not before Social Security goes broke, but before Social Security has to dip into its trust fund. Get a grip.

Turns out, though, that it's President Bush who has his numbers straight. Here is what the Congressional Budget Office wrote:

[A]nnual Social Security outlays exceed revenues starting in 2019, and scheduled benefits cannot be paid beginning in 2053.

I must be missing something. Ivins says Social Security won't have to borrow money until 2053, a sentiment echoed by CBO numbers.

Powerline must be taking issue with that 2018 number. Bush is claiming Social Security goes into the red in 2018. CBO says Social Security will start paying out more than it takes in. But Social Security for years has been taking in more than it needs to save up for instances such as this one. So Bush's sky is falling rhetoric is a bit extreme.