In all the talk about the deficit and Social Security one rarely hears of the heroic role that Social Security plays in masking a $170 billion in budget shortfalls.

This article in today's Washington Post noted that both inflation and consumer prices are up sharply. The CPI, which rose 4.7 percent over the past year, saw the biggest 12-month increase since May, 1991. The Post reported that Social Security payments will increase 4.1 percent in January for more than 50 million retired and disabled workers. The increases will help recipients keep up with inflation, which was up last year mainly because of rising energy costs. Energy prices were up 35 percent over the past 12 months.

In a news conference yesterday, President Bush put pressure on Congress to pay for as much of the hurricane relief as possible by cutting spending. He urged that funding be cut in both non-defense discretionary spending and entitlement spending. His comments prompted House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA) to claim that he will seek even more cuts in entitlement expenditures than those laid out in April's budget resolution. Currently the resolution instructs that entitlement spending be cut by $35 million over the next five years. Nussle said in an interview that Gulf Coast reconstruction costs should be partly offset through across-the-board reductions in discretionary spending, beginning with a 2 percent "haircut" from the $843 billion agreed to under the FY06 budget." The Coalition on Human Needs has an analysis highlighting how those cuts will affect human needs programs. One has to wonder where these gestures of fiscal responsibility were when Congress passed trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, which were not offset by any spending cuts. That Congress also wants to push ahead with extending reduced rates for capital gains and dividends taxes -- tax breaks which benefit primarily the wealthy -- further serves to illustrate that these spending cuts could be avoided. Bush also asserted yesterday that even though Congress has a "diminished appetite" for overhauling Social Security, he has not taken the issue off the table. Bush said, "Social Security for me is never off. It's a long-term problem that's going to need to be addressed." However, the solutions he claimed to support a few months ago would lower guarenteed benefits and cost $700 billion over the next decade. Not exactly a great way to cut down federal spending.