Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), a member of the bipartisan deficit commission, politely skewers HuffPo’s Sam Stein for repeating the “absurd” conventional wisdom among Democrats that Social Security is “solvent until 2037.” Watch here.

From the transcript:

Stein: “I don’t think this president will touch Social Security until after the election. I don’t see why he would. First of all, it’s solvent until 2037…”
Gregg: “It’s an absurd statement. You know, I like Sam, he went to school with my son… The simple fact is that statement is not credible. To support that statement you’ve got to believe that the notes that the Social Security system holds aren’t going to be called on by the American taxpayer to pay for. What the problem is that Social Security is running a cash deficit. In other words, sure, it has notes but the notes have to be paid for by the American taxpayer or they have to be funds that are borrowed. What we’re doing this year is borrowing $50 billion to pay for Social Security’s operation. Who are we borrowing that from? we’re borrowing 40 percent of it from… places such as China and Russia and people who will finance us — not a very stable thing to do… The Bowles-Simpson commission put out a proposal that didn’t affect the deficit a whole lot but did make Social Security actually solvent. It only takes a marginal amount of political courage to get this done, a marginal amount.”

For a more detailed look at how Social Security affects the deficit, see Veronique de Rugy’s post here.