Monday's release of the annual Medicare Trustees' report seems on the face of things to be a simple exercise in dry accounting – trust fund x will run out of money in year y.  In fact, it's much more than that.  It's an annual reminder that we are...

As of this summer, unemployment insurance trust funds in 30 states were insolvent and with poor long-term prospects in the labor market, these funds will remain a significant fiscal challenge in the future.

There is cause for concern regarding the viability and health of many state unemployment insurance trust funds, and federal policies to promote job creation are the single most important determinant of solvency.

To establish Social Security as a sustainable, solvent program, changes are necessary. A wide range of reforms have been proposed in recent years, and many of those proposals include changes both to future benefits and to payroll taxes.

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NPR should not fight defunding, but rather, work with Congress to get off the payroll so it no longer has to worry about pleasing politicians.

Last year, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super committee,” failed to agree on over a trillion dollars in budget cuts. This failure has triggered the looming “sequestration” of an additional $500 billion in defense dollar cuts over the next 10 years, among other mechanical cuts to other parts of the budget

Cutting the payroll tax cut, or even eventually eliminating it, might make more sense - if it happens on the Medicare, rather than Social Security side, of FICA.