Social Security vs Health "Reform"

Hot Air blog has an exclusive on something at once interesting and disturbing:

"[T]he CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode."

HA has scored a copy of the most recent Congressional Budget Office's report to Congress; the agency reports that Social Security will be officially in the red beginning next year. This is in stark contrast to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's prediction that the program would be solvent for the next 50 years, a claim he made as recently as 2005.

Two things about this strike me as important:

First, the blogosphere has (once again) scooped Old Media; it won't be the last time, of course.

Second, and more important, it puts the lie to the notion that government-run health care will be anything but cost in-effective. If CongressCritters can be so far off with a program that's decades old, how can we trust them to have a clue about such a massive new undertaking?

I think we all know the answer to that.