sequent campaign across the country for "saving" Social Security, presidential seals and pomp aside, had the feel of charlatanry emboldened by the success of previous great lies -- on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, on Saddam's ties with al-Qaida, on surplus-preserving tax cuts, to name the creme-de-la-crock.

By any standard, a system that is "exhausted and bankrupt" is a system that cannot pay a cent. By all accounts, including those of the White House, the Social Security Trust Fund will be able to pay full benefits at least through 2042, and by other government estimates, at least through 2052. After that, if not a single change is made to the program (which has been adjusted numerous times over the past 70 years to keep up with evolving realities, as any government program should be), the system will still be able to pay out 70 percent to 80 percent of benefits. Bankrupt? Not even close.

The president is abusing another misconception that has the ring of gospel: That the fewer people pay into Social Security, the harder it is for Social Security to meet its obligations. Bunk. In 1962, there were five workers for every Social Security beneficiary. Social Security ran a $1.3 billion deficit that year. In 2004, it was down to three workers for every Social Security beneficiary. Social Security ran a $151 billion surplus. True, lawmakers decided in 1977 and 1983 to expand the system from pay-as-you-go to include a savings account in preparation for the boomers' impact. But the surplus has exceeded expectations. It was expected to run out in 2029 just six years ago but just got a 13- or 23-year extension. What gives?

Simply this: It isn't just the number of workers paying into the system that matters. It is the kind of worker they are. A single engineer making $90,000 a year will contribute as much money to Social Security as eight burger-flippers making minimum wage. Not all benefits are drawn equally, of course. But some redistribution (the kind that rankles Republican sensibilities) is built into the system. Productivity also matters. It took more than 10 farm workers to feed 100 people 70 years ago. It takes one farm worker to do that today. It'll take even fewer in the future. Apply the same productivity principle to Social Security, and the worker-to-retiree ratio begins to look as outdated as the mule-driven plow. Yet mule math persists.

The way Bush uses numbers selectively is a telling example. He promises to cut the deficit in half by 2009 by reducing it from 3.5 percent of the size of the economy's GDP to 1.7 percent. To do so, he's projecting an economic growth rate averaging 5.5 percent each of the next five years (in current dollars), based on an expansion of GDP from $11.7 trillion in 2004 to $15.3 trillion in 2009. Fine. Take him at his word and his calculations.

But when the president turns to calculating Social Security's future health, he bases his assumptions of economic growth on the Social Security Administration's notoriously pessimistic calculations: An average annual growth of 1.8 percent over the next 20 years, an annual average worsening to 1.3 percent after that (the last 20 years' average was 2.6 percent) and anemic wage growth. The Social Security Administration's calculations are also based on zero net increases in immigration, even though the 1990s saw an increase of 11 million immigrants (compared with 6 million in the 1970s and 7 million in the 1980s). It is under that scenario that the trust fund would not be able to meet 100 percent of its liability beyond 2042. The scenario is so unrealistic that Bush would never dream applying it to his other economic projections.

The reality is that between new immigrants and a fertility rate well above Europe's, which together are projected to raise America's population close to half a billion by 2050, and an economic growth rate matching the average of the last 20 years, Social Security's future is assured well past 2042 without a single change in current law. Add to that the few, modest reforms cooler heads propose (a bump in the retirement age, raising the earnings cap on payroll taxes that now exempts income above $90,000, folding 4 million state and local employees into the system, and yes, raising the payroll tax but by less than a combined 1 percent on both employee and employer) and the Social Security Trust Fund could not only age as gracefully as Methuselah but also subsidize a few of Canada's retirees.

A crisis is indeed facing Social Security. It isn't bankruptcy. It is President Bush's proposed thievery, on Wall Street's behalf and with voodoo calculations, of the nation's most successful and functional government program.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net.

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