With continuing unemployment problems driving more and more Americans to seek Social Security disability benefits, that program’s already weakened trust fund faces a bleak future. Just as unemployed older workers have been forced to apply for Social Security retirement benefits much earlier than they expected, thousands of other unemployed people …
The Washington Post reports that President Obama wants the federal government to continue to have a major role in housing finance, perhaps by creating a new version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Despite an almost immediate denial of the story by Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wollin, the Post’s account …
Any budget agreement should include an improvement of the accuracy of Social Security’s annual cost-of-living allowance (COLA) payments. Press reports say this is now on the table. COLAs are designed to protect retirees against inflation eroding the value of their benefits, but the index used to calculate those payments is …
How Will This Report Affect the Social Security Debate? The debate about whether Social Security faces a problem and needs to be fixed is over. The 2011 trustees report, which was released this afternoon, shows that the program already faces massive permanent annual deficits. In 2010, Social Security spent $49 …
After more than a year of delay, the House Financial Services Committee is finally starting work on legislation that will hopefully end Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two housing finance giants that helped to make the housing crisis worse. Both essentially failed in September 2008 and have been in …
For the last couple of decades, Social Security analysts, public trustees, and even both Republican and Democratic Presidents have warned that unless the program is fixed, it faces perpetual cash-flow deficits. And now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that those perpetual deficits have arrived. As a result, it is …
