decifit paid off with social security. that s crazy. reporter: and it would be raise crazy if officials were planning to do that. that s just not true. any changes made to social security wouldn t take place for years or even decades, and they re designed to fix social security s funding problems, not to deal with today s decifit. so there s just a confusion there. it s not even legal, that s not the way the law works. the idea here is to make social security itself solvent, not to make it a piggy bank for other government programs, but to make it a program that can continue paying benefits. reporter: not only is it not legal to rob social security, the fiscal commission appointed by the president has more democrats than republicans and has two jobs looking for ways to reduce decifit spending but also fixing the entitlement programs including medicare which are in deep trouble. social security itself has more than $5 trillion in unfunded liabilities in coming decades, even more
bunker predicted finally caught up with us? stuart varney has caught up with us, the host of varney a& compay on the fox business network. was archie right? no, he was wrong. your check, brian, even at your age is safe but we do have a huge problem. for the first time in 25 years, last year, late last year, the social security paid out more than it brought in. it went to the deficit. that gets worse. we re eating away at this $2 1/2 trillion trust fund. it will run out by 2037 so you ve got to fix social security. there will be, i predict, an increase in the retirement age. there will be an increase in the taxable base for social security. both those things will happen but not for sometime to come but the fix will happen. right, so many people were worried about their social security and stuff like that but ultimately, wouldn t there be more money for social security if washington just wasn t so drunk spending our dough? well, sort of, yes.
beating mitt romney by 4 points. interestingly the don t know group takes third place at 19%. in a few moments larry sabato tells us about the most dangerous place for a candidate. that would be on top as we have seen time after time. martha: newt gingrich is doing a little bit to put the poll numbers to work for him. he s keeping up the heat on entitlement spending. he went to new hampshire and tried to sell his plan to fix social security. taking on the third rail in the middle of the campaign season. but he says what he would do is allow younger workers to invest their own money in social security. watch what he said. you make the whole thing voluntary. you don t want to do it, don t do it. if you prefer to get less money with less control, that s you are prerogative. you are allowed to be dumb.
i don t know. i think all gamesmanship should go bye-bye and we should just start anew. if that means that the republicans have to suggest it. i think there would be a lot of people behind that. chris christie was talking about a political position that the parties have taken and yesterday, barack obama was talking to a local affiliate, channel 9 somewhere where he took a political position regarding some of the entitlements. he said social security, we have to tweak a little bit, but basically, we can finance that well into the future. the big drivers of deficit and debt are medicare and medicaid, rising health care costs so the president s political position is for people who are on social security and fixed income, don t worry. your president is not going to touch it. if anybody touches it and if anybody tries to fix it essentially that s what the republicans would say. that goes into his whole main plattform of his biggest piece of legislation which is health care. you have t