Admitted swindler Bernie Madoff is an amateur compared to the U.S. government, which has been running the largest Ponzi scheme in the world for more than 70 years.

We've been hearing for decades how Social Security is going broke. The scheme simply can't sustain itself because more people are retiring than are entering the work force. Fewer people paying into the system and more people collecting is a recipe for disaster.

The part of the scheme is that politicians (mostly Democrats) have been raiding the Social Security system for decades to fund other government programs.

The dramatic decline of the U.S. economy in the past year has put more pressure than ever on the Social Security system, says the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which warns that the day of reckoning is fast approaching.

From an editorial in today's edition:

America's job losses are taking a toll on the surplus from government's favorite Ponzi scheme. That means the feds will have to look elsewhere, and a lot sooner, for the cash that's being borrowed from Social Security.

With the ongoing decline in payroll tax revenues, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security's surplus could drop to $16 billion this year and about $3 billion next. The surplus projection for '09 was $80 billion.

Liberals are quick to point out that the dwindling surplus doesn't affect current Social Security recipients. It's the same head-in-the-sand reasoning that has allowed Social Security to reach this precarious state.

Based on the CBO's projections, the government will have to borrow another $700 billion over the next decade to cover what it would have borrowed from Social Security. And perhaps as early as 2017, the Treasury will have to start paying back the billions it has taken from Social Security for the past 25 years.

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.