Baltimore Sun Discovers Social Security Budget Problem

You would hardly know that Social Security's headquarters are in Baltimore if your only source of news was the Baltimore Sun. Despite the fact that Social Security has to be one of Baltimore's larger employers, the Baltimore Sun hardly ever mentions the agency. Although the newspaper has not yet discovered that President Bush has nominated Michael Astrue to be the new Social Security Commissioner, the newspaper has finally discovered that Social Security has a budget problem. Of course, the article does not get it right, saying that the agency is only hiring one new employee for each three who departs, when SSA is actually hiring just about no new employees. The article also suggests that the threat of furloughing SSA employees is merely a negotiating ploy to get more money, when it is a stark necessity, and that SSA faces budget problems due to its own inefficiency, when the agency has cut its work force by about 33% over the last 20 years while its workload has soared.