It's always hard to tell if a politician is pandering to his base, doing what he wants or going along with institutional reality. The stimulus might have been the former.

Naked Capitalism recently linked this from 2007:

Eschaton: There Is No Crisis

I imagine some readers who haven't been hanging around these parts for all that long might have justifiably been puzzled at the reaction to Obama's decision to try to make dealing with Social Security his signature attack on Clinton. It's true that Obama didn't assert that there was some huge crisis. But the fact remains that he put the idea out there that Social Security had a "problem" which needs to be fixed and that any serious presidential candidate needs to address the issue in clear detail.