There was both good news and bad news in the Social Security trustees’ report released last week. The bad news is that the program is projected to cost somewhat more in the latest report than in the 2010 report. However, the bad news is also the good news. The main reason that the program’s finances deteriorated between the 2010 report and the 2011 report is that in the 2011 report the trustees assumed that we would enjoy substantially longer life expectancies than they did in the 2010 report. Nonetheless, the picture is hardly as dire as many politicians in Washington are claiming. Read CEPR’s Social Security Byte here and Dean Baker’s further analysis here for the whole story.