A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Social Security is an important social insurance program affecting virtually every American family. It is the foundation of the nation's retirement income system and also provides millions of Americans with disability insurance and survivors' benefits. Over the long term, as the baby boom generation retires, Social Security's financing shortfall presents a major solvency and sustainability challenge. The Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance asked GAO to use its analytic framework to evaluate an illustrative "Trust Fund Exhaustion" scenario under which benefits are reduced proportionately for all beneficiaries by the shortfall in revenues occurring upon exhaustion of the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds. The analytic framework consists of three basic criteria: (1) the extent to which the proposal achieves sustainable solvency and how it would affect the U.S. economy and the federal budget; (2) the balance struck between the twin goals of income adequacy and individual equity; and (3) how readily changes could be implemented, administered, and explained to the public. The Trust Fund Exhaustion scenario is intended as an analytic …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The decisions that retiring workers make about how and when to draw down their pension plan assets determine in part whether they will have pension income that lasts throughout retirement. Individuals will need pension and other retirement income to sustain them over a longer period of time than in the past. Moreover, the continuing trend towards pension plans with individual accounts has increased participants' responsibility for managing their pension assets during retirement. As such, our objectives were to determine: (1) what benefit payout options and accompanying information pension plans make available to participants at retirement, (2) what benefit payouts plan participants receive at retirement, and (3) the actions available to help retiring participants preserve their pension and retirement savings plan assets."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "From 1990 through 2001, the Department of Defense delivered over $138 billion in services and defense articles--including classified and controlled parts--to foreign governments through its foreign military sales programs. Classified spare parts are restricted for national security reasons, while controlled parts contain technology that the military does not want to release. GAO was asked to review the Air Force's internal controls aimed at preventing countries from requisitioning and receiving classified or controlled spare parts that they are ineligible to receive."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program paid about $35 million recipients in 2002. In recent years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has identified a general increase in the amount of annual overpayments made to (1) individuals who are found to have violated program residency requirements or (2) recipients who leave the United States and live outside the country for more than 30 consecutive days without informing SSA. This problem has caused concern among both program administrators and policy makers. As such, GAO was asked to determine what is known about the extent to which SSI benefits are improperly paid to individuals who are not present in the United States and to identify any weaknesses in SSA's processes and policies that impede the agency's ability to detect and deter residency violations."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Social Security is an important social insurance program affecting virtually every American family. It is the foundation of the nation's retirement income system and also provides millions of Americans with disability insurance and survivors' benefits. Over the long term, as the baby boom generation retires, Social Security's financing shortfall presents a major program solvency and sustainability challenge. The Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging asked GAO to discuss Social Security's long-term financing challenges and the results of GAO's analysis of an illustrative "Trust Fund Exhaustion" scenario. Under this scenario, benefits are reduced proportionately for all beneficiaries by the shortfall in revenues occurring upon exhaustion of the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds. This scenario was developed for analytic purposes and is not a legal determination of how benefits would be paid in the event of trust fund exhaustion. GAO's analysis used the framework it has developed to analyze the implications of reform proposals. This framework consists of three criteria: (1) the extent to which the proposal achieves sustainable solvency and how it would affect the U.S. economy and the federal budget, (2) …