Bush has Medicare and Social Security so underfunded the numbers are "surreal"

NYTimes Analysis: Medicare and Social Security Challenge

The Bush administration has estimated that the gap between promises under current law and the revenues expected will total $18 trillion over the next 75 years. But an internal study in 2002 by the Treasury Department, looking much further ahead, concluded that the gap was actually $44 trillion - and would climb each year that nothing was done.

Professor Kotlikoff of Boston University has devised a "menu of pain'' to lay out different ways of bridging the gap. The choices range from an immediate increase in federal income taxes of 69 percent to an immediate cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits of 45 percent.

And those numbers may be too low, he said, because even the disavowed Treasury estimate for the shortfall may be too low. Adding in the new prescription drug program, he said, the imbalance is closer to $51 trillion.