Social Security was scheduled to run in the red by 2017, but that projection was expected to be revised downward this week. Meanwhile, Medicare was already projected to be in the red by next year and totally depleted by 2019.

Fewer people working in the U.S. means fewer dollars going into those trust funds. Perhaps it will be the wake-up call that illustrates that bills do come due and that borrowing more money at a time of exploding deficits ultimately has a price.

The concept of fiscal responsibility may indeed be a stretch but expect Medicare to at least become a top priority, as leaving it to the next set of elected officials is quickly becoming a non option. Then again, the initiative last week was to actually extend health coverage to an additional 50 million Americans.

Soaring entitlement spending is going to have to be addressed sooner rather than later. After all, 78 million baby boomers are fixing to begin retiring soon. For perspective, the Obama administration on Monday revised its deficit projections upward to $1.84 trillion, four times last year’s record deficit.