This week, the usual scare tactics clanked into gear when the Medicare and Social Security Trustees released their projections — supposedly “running out” in 2026 and 2034. The WSJ shrieked Social Security Trust Fund goes bust!. The Times also featured it.

Do not submit to the hysteria. It will be used to justify cuts, when in reality the programs should be expanding.

Stephanie Kelton, an economics professor at Stonybrook, asks this question in response to the data:

4 Trust Funds, 3 Problems: Why is the Other one so “Healthy”?

Social Security’s (OASI) and (DI) Trust Funds, as well as Medicare’s (HI) Trust Fund all face chronic problems, some in the not-too-distant future. In contrast, Medicare’s (SMI) Trust Fund always receives a clean bill of health. Why is that?

The last, SMI, is not “in trouble” because “current law automatically provides financing each year to meet the next year’s expected costs.”

Can this be done for social security, disability and medicare? Yes! All that stands in the way is political will.

Yes, FDR provided a mechanism in which current workers fund payments to retirees through FICA. But do you really think FDR would favor cuts in benefits if that funding fell short because of demographic or other factors? Not according to his “Four Freedoms,” which included “freedom from want.”

So in the event the Trust Funds are depleted in 2026 or 2034, the law could provide funding must continue, just as it does for SMI now.

But what about the deficit? Well, what about it? We’re talking about a 2026 deficit, not one now. The projections are very conservative, meaning pessimistic projections: The fund may not be depleted in 2026. Past projections have almost all been changed to go farther into the future. So funding Medicare (or Social Security) may not even require additional funds in 2026.

But even if it does, and the 2026 budget must include payment of a Medicare shortfall, will that even “blow up the deficit?” We don’t know. And even if the deficit grows because of that, the growth may or may not be inflationary. Have the past 40 years of deficits been inflationary? No. See my Democratic Deficit Obsession: A Surrender to the GOP's Asymmetrical Debt Warfare

So Medicare and Social Security Hysteria is total and utter bullshit designed to justify literally lethal cuts now when (a) there may not even be a shortfall in 2026 or 2034; and (b) if there is, we can fund the shortfall just as we fund anything else, including bloated defense budgets, wars, Medicare D and anything else.

The only thing standing in the way of saving and expanding our benefit programs is political will, manipulated by villains (Republicans, Peterson Foundation), who employ phony panic to get people to support cutting their own throats, and misguided Democrats, who place “fiscal responsibility” above their constituents’ lives.