politics

Keeping an Eye on the Social Security Shell Game

December 21, 2004

Social Security debate has dominated the news over the past few weeks as the Bush administration has begun its campaign to partially privatize the program. At the center of the Bush administration’s campaign is a projection of Social Security’s unfunded liability — and, like any projection, it’s a product of a host of other numbers.

So far, the Bush administration and its supporters have used two figures to talk about the unfunded liability — $3.7 trillion and $10.4 trillion. The smaller sum is projected over 75 years, while the larger sum is projected over an infinite timeline.

Few, if any, are challenging the validity of these numbers. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has argued against the privatization of social security, confirmed for CJR Daily that these numbers are accurate within the timelines attached to them.

But as the Bush administration trots them out to makes its case, the public generally receives them with little context to explain the difference. The numbers are often included in Social Security articles without mention of the timeline that they refer to, leaving the reader wondering what to think. Much like a poll result is incomplete without the margin of error, so the unfunded Social Security liability is incomplete without the number of years that it’s projected over.

Including the timeline at least provides transparency, but even that does not provide context. In the spirit of context, the Associated Press does something today that very few other outlets have done — printing both numbers in the same article. The result is a piece that reveals how easily the Bush administration can inflate a problem to make it seem worse than it is:

The retirement system faces a projected $3.7 trillion, 75-year shortfall. … The figure — $10.4 trillion to be precise — is the shortfall over the “infinite horizon,” as measured by Social Security’s Board of Trustees.

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After digesting both numbers it’s unlikely that the average reader will have a complete grasp of Social Security’s financial stability over the next X number of years. But at least he or she will be aware that the administration is playing shell games with numbers.

–Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.