In the same September 20 debate I discussed earlier, Clinton had this to say about the program’s solvency:

“When my husband left office…the projection was that Social Security was solvent until 2055….Now after seven years of President Bush and an irresponsible Republican Congress, the life of the Social Security trust fund has been cut to 2041.”

This is what we in the political business call “a big fat lie.” And it’s one she’s tossed out at more than one debate, so it’s a safe bet we’ll hear it again from her lips.

Bill Clinton left office in January 2001. In March 2001, the Social Security Board of Trustees issued its annual report on the long-term health of the trust fund. It stated that the Social Security trust fund would become insolvent in 2038. Not 2055. The 2000 Trustees’ report only gave it until 2037.

And Clinton is certainly aware of the Trustees’ reports, because it’s the 2007 Trustees’ Report that she’s citing for the current 2041 life expectancy of the trust fund.

So it isn’t a loss of 14 years. It’s a gain of 3. Still not enough to benefit my generation, but it’s a 17-year discrepancy that completely destroys Clinton’s point, and if she keeps repeating this, also her credibility on any matters regarding Social Security.

Where, then, did Clinton pull this 2055 date from? From her husband’s rejected Social Security reform package. He proposed spending nearly 2/3 of the projected federal budget surpluses for the next 15 years on Social Security (which really amounts to little more than a backdoor OASDI tax increase), and investing one-quarter of that money in the stock market. It was projected that those two moves, together, would extend Social Security’s solvency to 2055.

Of course, this proposal never passed, and was condemned as being a masterpiece of creative bookkeeping. Yet it’s this projected date for a reform plan that was never adopted that Clinton has intentionally chosen as her grossly misleading basis of comparison.

Somebody call FactCheck.org.