The U.S. is now closer to the insolvency of the Social Security than to the attacks of Sept. 11.

Trustees for the retirement and disability program revealed on Tuesday that Social Security will no longer be able to meet its obligations to beneficiaries starting in in 2034, or 16 years from now — which is less time than has elapsed since terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

In 2005, President George W. Bush was dismissed as an alarmist for highlighting projections that the program would begin spending more money on benefits than it takes in starting in 2018 and that its "trust fund" would be depleted in 2042. In reality, it has been running annual deficits since 2010, and the insolvency date has moved up eight years.

The "trust fund" is actually an accounting fiction that pretends that spending doesn't ultimately all come from the bank accounts of taxpayers. But the conceit is that because the federal government for decades used money intended for Social Security to pay for other extravagant spending, the Treasury built up IOUs to the Social Security program that enable it to keep up with benefits. By 2034, however, those past program surpluses will be spent, meaning that benefits will have to be slashed by 25 percent for Americans who are around 50 years old right now.

As the Social Security crisis keeps getting closer, the political parties are moving further away from doing anything about it. For Democrats, not only is it an article of faith that there is no Social Security crisis, liberals actually want to expand it. Meanwhile, President Trump campaigned on leaving entitlements alone, and whatever Tea Party generated GOP enthusiasm existed for tackling the nation's debt problem dissipated once Barack Obama left office.

What's scary is that Social Security is relatively easy to fix when compared to Medicare, a program where the rising retirement population is interacting with growing healthcare costs. And the trustees now say that program is going to be insolvent in 2026 — or roughly the same time as we are from the passage of Obamacare.

