Here lies the challenge. If you were on the committee, and you don't want to change benefits, and others don't want to increase deductions (the hated taxes word), it leaves little margin for solution.

If you have been following this thread you know that all that money is already there in a trust so there is no need to worry.

There are a lot of options on the Presidents table. We are fighting a war that is not a whole lot different than Vietnam. Get out and spend the money here.

Of course that particular president is on another vacation with the queen and family.

I have been.

2037 may seem like a long way away, but if you were born after 1970, tweaks need to be made. I'm a late baby boomer, and there will be a large number of my generation added to this group. People born in 1960 will be 77 in 2037. There have been a number of tweaks over the years to extend out it's solvency.

Even though I also think our military spending is way out-of-control, I cannot imagine a group that would make retirement benefits as a budgetary item.

In 1996, the trustees projected that the system would go broke in 2029 (34 years) In 2007, they said 2041 (33 years). Today they say 2037 (27 years). The degree of anticipated crisis has remained essentially the same for the last 14 years. The target is moving because the assumptions move.

The SS trustees publish three financial forecasts. Optimistic, "most likely" and pessimistic. For 30 years, the "most likely" scenario has been consistently pessimistic.

The real goal is to set up the conditions where government never has to repay the government bonds that workers have invested in.

Wait a minute, I was born after 1970! Of course, therein lies this issue as far as repaying what is owed to SS. Generally speaking, people born after 1970 aren't voting in the numbers as those born before 1970. So there's little political risk to today's policy makers. This is same reason that when running a budget surplus in the early 2000s, instead of paying down the debt, we cut taxes. The debt and the deficit would wait for another day, another generation. While the spending is high now, it seems more like a temporary situation brought on by a bad economy. The deficit increases of the last decade were brought on by political greed.

I hope to see some progress in the next few years as far as getting people closer to my age involved in the process. Otherwise, we'll be stuck with a future that is handed to us.