According to Census Bureau estimates, the population of the United States will hit 300,000,000 sometime in the next couple weeks.

Discussion of the significance of this demographic milestone, such as the latest issue of US News & World Report brings to mind a related topic: social security. Having harped on social security reform for some time, I gave it a rest for a while. But the issue hasn’t gone away. All the dire projections of a shortfall in social security—and other entitlements tied to the aging of America’s population, such as Medicare—have simply e clearer and more certain over the course of the last couple years.

President Bush’s talk of reform gave hope to some, but the reality has been little more than treading water (conceding that there have been other pressing concerns with which the administration has had to deal). As the analyses at the Institute for Policy Innovation (see “Entitlement Reform”) show, the problem can’t be ignored forever.