Weekend Briefing – Saturday, October 10, 2009

I’m going to be tied up with family all weekend but here’s a collection of must read links:

• CBO: Budget deficit hit record $1.4T in 2009 – Associated Press
• Proposals to create jobs add up to second stimulus – Associated Press
• A Nobel for Obama – New York Sun
• Barack Obama’s peace prize starts a fight – Times Online
• McCain Vs. Palin For The GOP’s Soul – Investors Business Daily
• What I Heard in Honduras – Rep. Jim DeMint, Wall Street Journal
• California Budget Is Already in the Red 10 Weeks After Passage – Bloomberg
• Report: Reining in lawsuits would cut deficit – Washington Times
• CBO’s Analysis of the Effects of Proposals to Limit Costs Related to Medical Malpractice (“Tort Reform”) – CBO Director’s Blog
• Save the Greenback, Mr. President – Larry Kudlow, CNBC
• Paying the Health Tax in Massachusetts – Wendy Williams, Wall Street Journal
• CBO Stands for Cooked Books Office – Rep. John Shadegg, Red State
• What happened to global warming? – BBC News
• As Republicans Predict a 2010 Surge, Democrats Dig In – New York Times
• Taliban growth weighs on Obama strategy review – Reuters

Feel free to add your links in comments.

Train Wreck: CBO Predicts Social Security Cash Deficits in 2010-11

Ed Morrissey has obtained a copy the summer 2009 Congressional Budget Office report on the health of the Social Security “Trust Fund”… The news isn’t good, actually it’s pretty frightening:

Four years ago, George W. Bush attempted to reform the entitlement program Social Security, warning that the system was accelerating into collapse and would soon run deficits.  Democrats scoffed and claimed the Social Security system was solid and wouldn’t have problems for at least 50 years, as Harry Reid told PBS’ Jim Lehrer in June 2005.  Just last year, the CBO — under the direction of Peter Orszag, now budget director in the Obama administration — claimed that the first cash deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.

Now, however, the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode.  Hot Air has exclusively obtained the summer 2009 CBO report sent to legislators on Capitol Hill but not yet made public, which shows that outgo will exceed income for the first time since the 1983 fix on an annual basis in 2010: Read the rest…

Suffices to say the situation with Social Security is much worse than the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats want to admit. They’re hell bent on creating new budget busting entitlements while existing ones are headed for collapse.

It’s high time Congressional Democrats faced some tough questions on Social Security…  Four years ago they shot down George W. Bush’s reform proposals and we’re fast approaching the point were meaningful reforms will be impossible.