Uh, oh…

Bad news for Social Security.

by Heather Wilhelm

Tick, tock…Michael Barone reports in today’s “Beltway Confidential” that Social Security’s day of reckoning may be closer than we think:

Social Security tax receipts for the first half of 2010: $346.9 billion; Social Security benefits payments for the same period: $347.3 billion. Before this year, projections have always been that Social Security wouldn’t cross that line into negative cash flow for five years or so. Now it’s a reality. Congress has been spending Social Security’s positive cash flow for years. Now there’s no positive cash flow to spend.

In other words, as Barone points out, “A positive cash flow of $31.7 billion has disappeared in the course of just 12 months. Scary.”  Indeed.