What's really driving U.S. deficit

Social Security is expected to increase, but not at an alarming level. Spending on everything else is actually falling. It's health care that's the problem, as you can see from the three charts prepared by the Congressional Budget Office. These long-range projections present the current policy baseline and assume that nothing changes - no cost controls, no new taxes, no new laws. From the Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

If we just continue on the way we're going, then "spending for Social Security, Medicare, other major health programs, defense, and interest payments" will "nearly equal all of the government's revenues in 2020 and would exceed them from 2022 onward -- leaving no revenues to cover any other federal activities, such as income security programs, retirement benefits for federal civilian and military employees, transportation, research, education, law enforcement, and many other programs."