the Obama/Bush/Clinton recession leads to more trouble for SS and Medicare

I thought I had blogged on this earlier. But I heard it again on the radio and began to wonder. Looking through my archives, I can find no record of a post, so here it goes:

With the current recession, we're running a deficit much sooner than anticipated in Social Security-- with both SS and Medicare coming under even more strain given the Obama/Bush/Clinton recession.

From NPR...

The 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees report released Tuesday showed the funds will be exhausted a couple of years sooner than expected. That's largely because high unemployment rates mean a lower level of payroll tax receipts being paid in to both programs.

And from the NYT...

As a result, the administration said, the Medicare fund that pays hospital bills for older Americans is expected to run out of money in 2017, two years sooner than projected last year. The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than predicted, it said.

Spending on Social Security and Medicare totaled more than $1 trillion last year, accounting for more than one-third of the federal budget.