Reid: Social Security solid, but Tea Party is fleeting

Sen. Harry Reid said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday in an interview with David Gregory that the Tea Party will go away but Social Security won’t.

Reporter Steve Tetreault quoted from the interview in Monday’s paper.

"Social Security is a program that works," Reid said. "Stop picking on Social Security. … It is not in crisis. That is something that is perpetuated by people who don’t like government."

He also said, "I am not going to go to any of those backdoor methods to whack Social Security recipients. We have a lot of things we can do with this debt that is a problem. But one of the places I am not going to be part of picking on is Social Security."

Others disagree. Here is the math as calculated by the editorialists at Investor’s Business Daily.

“The entitlement, established in 1935, has historically run surpluses,” the editorial states. “But payouts have begun to exceed revenue. Last year, the program ran a temporary deficit of $41 billion, and this year it will also pay out more than it takes in.

After 2015, the paper noted Social Security is projected to pay out $7.9 trillion more in benefits than it will get in revenues.

As for that $2.6 trillion in IOUs, the paper noted, “But that money’s gone, spent by undisciplined lawmakers such as Reid.”

On the Tea Party, Reid was quoted as saying, "I don’t think the Tea Party had the vigor and support that people thought it would. There were a couple of them (who) won but most of them lost."

He added: "What the election showed me is that we had a terribly bad economy, and that’s where the Tea Party came from, and that the American people want us to work together."

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul says otherwise. He said on Fox after Reid spoke that the party was founded on the federal deficit, not the economy.

"They’re worried about the debt ceiling; we’re worried about the $14 trillion deficit," he said.