The fact that the report is late and the Social Security Administration is being less than forthcoming with the release date of the Trustees Report should definitely not serve to fuel conspiracy theories about political pressure to cook the books.
The reason to cook the books is that productivity gains for 2005 once again came out far ahead of predictions. At some point by their own stated methodology (which I can't locate at the moment) the high productivity gains in recent years should serve to revise upwards the long run productivity growth estimate, at which point Social Security will be declared solvent until the end of the universe.
And we can't have that.
