Thread by @pleasesaveour, Social Security/Deficit ThreadI saw an ad yesterday, and it got me to [...]

Social Security/Deficit Thread

I saw an ad yesterday, and it got me to thinking, who's telling the truth about Social Security and the Deficit?

Here is Ronald Reagan in 1992 definitively saying that SSI has nothing to do with the deficit:

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President Obama said the same thing in 2011:

“Social Security has never contributed a dime to the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt…not one penny to our federal budget deficit this year or any year in our nation’s history.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/social-security-and-its-role-in-the-nations-debt/2011/07/11/gIQAp1Wl9H_blog.html?utm_term=.2b6299e12300 …

So what was Mitch McConnell

Social Security and its role in the nation’s debt

Congressional Democrats say that Social Security has added not a cent to the nation’s $14 trillion debt. Is that statement true — and does it matter?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/social-security-and-its-role-in-the-nations-debt/2011/07/11/gIQAp1Wl9H_blog.html?utm_term=.2b6299e12300

talking about when he said entitlements are 70% of the government spending every year?

Primer: Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed

for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities, because they have to zero out the books every year.

Here is what happened in 1983, the beginning

of the current crisis:

Social Security had a severe cash crunch in 1983. Because of shifting demographics, the program was within months of not having enough money coming in to pay benefits.The government solved its problem by making the problem for workers worse — it raised

taxes, cut benefits, and increased the retirement age.

https://www.nysun.com/opinion/stopping-the-social-security-raid/50792/ …

Here's how the congressional raid works: The surplus payroll tax dollars go into the Social Security Trust Fund, which in turn uses them to buy special issue bonds from the U.S. Treasury. Then

Stopping the Social Security Raid

The apparent collapse of talks between the White House and Senate Democrats suggests that, though we should remain vigilant, conservative groups appear to have successfully stopped a sell-out effort...

https://www.nysun.com/opinion/stopping-the-social-security-raid/50792/

Congress can use those dollars, in the Treasury, to spend on anything it wants. All that Social Security has are the bonds. The bonds pay interest, but Congress raids the interest, too, by simply placing more bonds in the trust fund.

President Bush explained this pretty well

in a speech in 2005: "You pay your payroll tax, we pay out to current retirees, and then we spend your money on other government programs."

In 2006 this passed $1 trillion used for programs other than Social Security since 1983 not including interest.

Fifty years ago,

there were 16 workers for every retiree. Now there are three, and soon there will be only two. The only way to stop this is to stop the raiding of interest and SSI.

The deficit argument is the money they have to pay back to the fund, that they owe the fund.

Basically, they don't want to pay off their debt. Get it?

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