Smile -- You're on Social Security!

"I spent a fair amount of time talking to senior people in the White House, talking to people in Congress," Astrue explained. "There is an acknowledgment that they have to step up and do it."

Oh? "We're not seeing that," WJLA's Rebecca Cooper advised the commissioner. "What did they tell you?"

"When you're behind closed doors," the commissioner asserted, "there's a real expectation that it's going to happen."

Cooper tried again. "You as the leader on this -- what are you backing?"

"Well, uh, I -- I'm flattered by the assumption of your question," the commissioner said, but "Secretary Paulson has the lead." (That would be Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.)

"What do you recommend?"

"Well, I'm recommending what Secretary Paulson knows I'm recommending to him, but I'm not going to share that now."

So, the Social Security commissioner has secret ideas for fixing the system and lawmakers secretly want to take action? No wonder the members of Generation X -- born after 1964 -- are more likely to believe in UFOs than in receiving their Social Security checks.

Casey-Kirschling, speaking for the boomers, counseled confidence. "I have great hope," she said, that Social Security will be repaired for "my children's generation and certainly my grandchildren's."

Cooper, a Gen X-er, asked Casey-Kirschling about that famous UFO poll. "Why do you have so much confidence?"

"I always like to have my glass half full," she explained.

The first boomer, who lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore, opened her eyes wide with surprise as she entered yesterday's event at the National Press Club and saw all the TV cameras. She put on her reading glasses, then pointed and clicked her way through the online application while television recorded her every mouse movement. "A fun experience," she pronounced when she finished, then went on to explain why she was applying for early Social Security benefits.

"I'm going to take it now because I can take it now," Casey-Kirschling reasoned. "I'm thrilled to think that after all these years I'm getting paid back the money I put in."

For those who will follow the boomers into retirement, it had the faint ring of a taunt.