Each week brings more alarming headlines about the nation's retirement crisis. American workers aren't saving enough. Social Security is going broke. More older Americans are returning to work. Yada, yada, yada.

With the possible exception of whether the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Dallas Cowboys are professional football's greatest dynasty, no issue has been studied at greater length by so many distinguished experts, including at least a half dozen panels that have examined Social Security over the past 25 years or so. If nobody else will be able to, at least pollsters who make a living examining the pathetic saving habits of America workers will be able to retire comfortably.

If you think not enough resources have been brought to bear on the problem, that we need the same kind of single-minded national crusade that put an American on the moon in eight years, think again.

In today's dollars, the Apollo space program cost in the neighborhood of $140 billion. Social Security will pay out approximately $576 billion in benefits this year to more than 49 million retirees, disabled workers, their families and their survivors, according to recent estimates by the U.S. Treasury Department. That's about 20 percent of the entire federal budget.

There was a silver lining in Treasury's report. Since 2000, the projected date Social Security will run out of money has been pushed back four years to 2041.

As concerns over Social Security's solvency have increased, pension plans, another traditional source of retirement income, are available to fewer American workers.

You can see where this is headed. If the government has problems saving for your retirement and your employer has problems has saving for your retirement, guess who they're going to subcontract some of the job to?

Which is why there are 401(k) accounts. The increasingly ubiquitous accounts give individuals the responsibility for determining how much to save, how to invest it, and how to make it last in retirement. Thankfully, more workers are getting much needed assistance from employers on how to be their own pension fund manager.

Assets in 401(k) and similar defined contributions plans increased from $417 billion in 1985 to $3 trillion in 2005, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. That sounds like a pretty big number until you compare how little many are saving and how much they'll need to live comfortably in retirement.

EBRI's 17th annual (this really is a cottage industry) Retirement Confidence survey showed that while 70 percent of those polled were very or somewhat confident about their financial security in retirement, 49 percent had saved less than $25,000.

"I think to a very large extent they're deluding themselves," says Jack VanDerhei, a Temple University professor and co-author of the report.

Aren't we all?

To address the 401(k) shortfall, landmark legislation approved by Congress last year gives employers more legal cover to automatically deduct a percentage of an employee's paycheck and invest it in a 401(k) account. The logic is that workers won't have the initiative to object and will, by default, save more. Early results indicate this dim view of workers is realistic and is translating into higher savings rates.

Is anyone asking whether automatic deduction, which seems to be making individuals save more for retirement, could work for the federal government and Social Security or corporate America and pension plans? That may seem simplistic. After all, the government and corporations have other spending needs to think about. But so do workers, who are paying more for their employer-sponsored health care, paying more for their retirement savings because they won't get the pension their father did, and saving for their children's college education.

Realistically, Social Security and traditional pensions will never again be the pillars they once were for many retirees. Workers are slowly realizing this. Among current retirees, 61 percent say Social Security or a pension is their biggest source of retirement income, according to EBRI. But 78 percent of future retirees expect their largest source of retirement income will come from a 401(k) or other personal savings.

Translating those expectations into an action plan that gets them to save sufficiently is another thing. Last year's legislation and the efforts of many employers to offer lower-cost 401(k) plans with better investment options are huge steps in the right direction.

Now that Washington has done so much for individual retirement savings, it's time for it to do something about the responsibility it accepted when Social Security was launched in 1935. Finding a way to put Social Security on firmer footing, whether by reducing benefits and/or increasing payroll taxes or other measures, would be the perfect way for the government to lead by example when it comes to retirement savings.

And what better time for government to take the lead than an election year, not through bumper sticker solutions, but through the rational, honest debate the issue deserves. Cynics will say the chances of that happening are about as slim as the chances of Americans saving enough for retirement. Here's hoping at least one of well-groomed horde of presidential contenders will go off message and prove them wrong.