while medicare spending is on an unsustainable path, the brookings institution's gary burtless pinning down future medical costs is hard to do. >> it's growing faster than the price of most other service providers, but the question is how much faster and will eventually those excess cost increases for medical care slow down so the rate of increase is closer to the prices we pay for other services. >> reporter: the outlook for the social security trust fund did not change much, but the program's cash flow did. for the first time in more than 25 years, benefit costs now exceed tax revenues and will for decades to come. last year, social security ran a cash deficit of $49 billion. a $41 billion deficit is projected for this year and another $20 billion gap by 2014. to cover those deficits, social security will have to dip into its $2.6 trillion trust fund. heritage foundation analyst david john says that trust fund is made up of special treasury bonds which will be redeemed with other federal borrowing. >> they have the full faith and credit of the united states government, so they will b

neighborhood it's a matter of class neighborhood to me we're right in the middle we economists like gary burtless isn't surprised i can tell you what people thought up to about five years ago i think over eighty five percent of americans thought they were in the middle class. a recent study found that americans believe the richest twenty percent only hole of about fifty nine percent of the world the actual number eighty four percent but ideally they said the breakdown should be much more equal but clearly it's not good america was a country that sort of stood stayed together historically with great unity on the glue that we all figured if we work hard we play by the rules we do better than our parents so they would do better than their parents and our kids would do better than us economists say that is no longer the case in the united states and that we've gone from being one of the most openly mobile countries in the developing world to the least a trend that change course in the one nine hundred seventy s. perhaps one reason can be seen here take a look at this the blue line shows how much the