No surprise, this was leaked to HA not to long ago:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that's happened since the 1980s.
The deficits -- $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 -- won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.
Applications for retirement benefits are 23 percent higher than last year, while disability claims have risen by about 20 percent. Social Security officials had expected applications to increase from the growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement, but they didn't expect the increase to be so large.
What happened? The recession hit and many older workers suddenly found themselves laid off with no place to turn but Social Security.
''A lot of people who in better times would have continued working are opting to retire,'' said Alan J. Auerbach, an economics and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. ''If they were younger, we would call them unemployed.''
Social Security Administration should rescind the wage limitation on Seniors attaining the age of 62 whom are being forced to semi retire and take a lesser job. We still pay into the system and the more we work we increase the revenue going into the funds to pay out, thus we would have more buying power to put back into the economy.
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