Medicare is the more urgent concern

The bad economy has taken a toll on Social Security's finances, moving the date when the program will no longer be able to pay full benefits ahead one year to 2036. That's inching in the wrong direction, but it's no crisis. Not with benefits secure for 24 years.

After that, projections say, the program will be able to deliver only a portion of promised payments. Washington must make changes to ensure its long-term solvency. But that shouldn't be done in a rush during a bitter fight this summer over trimming federal deficits before raising the government's debt limit.

President Barack Obama has resisted throwing Social Security reform into that political cauldron, and Republican congressional leaders have acquiesced. That's sound judgment all around.

Medicare is a more urgent concern. The trust fund that helps pay hospital bills for its 48 million beneficiaries will be exhausted in 2024, according to the annual report released Friday by the Social Security and Medicare Trustees. That's five years earlier than they projected last year. Congress has to find ways to control that spending, which now exceeds the program's revenue. That should be on the table in current deficit-reduction talks.

But Social Security does not need big changes. Small ones could extend its solvency for decades. That's what Congress did in 1983 when it authorized a gradual increase in the retirement age and partial taxation of benefits. A similar pragmatic approach is what's needed now.