Comparing Budgetary and Trust Fund Measures of the Outlook for Social Security and Medicare. CBO Long-Range Fiscal Policy Brief

摘要

The most comprehensive view of the financial outlook for Social Security and Medicare comes from estimating the resources that the federal government would need to draw for the programs from the nations economic outputthat is, the share of gross domestic product (GDP) that they would consume. That type of measure is conventionally used for the federal budget as a whole. In contrast, the reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees are required by law to focus on the status of the trust fund accounts that the Treasury Department maintains for the programs and to indicate whether the Congress has granted them sufficient spending authority to cover their expected payments.