With Social Security's retirement fund expected to go broke in two and a half decades, it's no real surprise that another part of Social Security -- its disability program -- is projected to run dry far sooner, in 2017.

Retiring baby boomers and workers who have lost their jobs are flooding the disability portion of Social Security with benefit claims, pushing it toward bankruptcy just six years from now. That has led to calls to shuffle money out of Social Security's retirement fund and into its disability program -- but that would just hasten the day when the retirement fund itself goes broke.

It's also predicted that Medicare will run out of money in the next decade or so.

Don't these alarming projections show that it's past time for Congress to stop procrastinating and to focus on reform of entitlement programs -- both to secure the programs for those who have paid into them and to get a handle on our national debt? We cannot keep denying the need for reform, however painful it may be.