Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Federal benefits get longer life span

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - Fewer benefits, more tax money and some accounting changes have bought an extra year of life for Social Security and Medicare, trustees of the government's two largest benefit programs said Monday.

The oncoming crush of 78-million retiring baby boomers still will crash the Medicare trust fund by 2019 and the Social Security trust fund by 2041 unless Congress and the White House can agree on a way to save the programs, the officials said. Those dates are each one year later than estimated in last year's report.

For the first time, Medicare hit a trigger that requires President Bush to send the House and Senate legislation to deal with Medicare's funding problems with his 2009 budget. Congressional Republicans crafted that trigger when they were in control of the House and Senate.

The Medicare funding warning is triggered when two consecutive trustees reports conclude that the amount of general revenue needed to finance Medicare will top 45 percent of the program's outlays.

The trustees' report says Social Security could be saved with "an immediate increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent or some combination of the two."

[Last modified April 24, 2007, 01:10:12]