The bottom line is that Social Security’s long-term funding difficulty, while real, is projected to be much smaller and much further in the future than any of the nearer, larger, and more significant fiscal problems currently facing the US government. If Social Security is a slow tire leak, then the post-2020 General Fund is an urgent brake job, Medicare and Medicaid are a melted transmission, and the budget deficit is the equivalent of having just crashed into a tree.