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There's a difference between a "fund" on paper, which is just a balance on a ledger, and "fund" in the bank, which is an amount of actual cash available to "fund" the "fund".

Since the paper balance SS trust has been used to finance the US Government's over-spending for almost 2 generations now, there is no cash fund available to actually out accrued benefits. And there is no coffee can full of money buried out behind the US Treasury. Just the good name of this country to back the issued currency.

Where would you have put those "surpluses" other than in interest bearing T-bills? SS is a pay as you go system. It is also a Ponzi scheme. The people at the bottom of the pyramid are paying for the benefits of those at the top.

Why Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme

SS is failing along with Medicare because they are structurally unsustainable. It really doesn't matter where the "surplus" went, but rather, that the numbers just don't work in terms of revenue and benefits. Together, both programs represent an unfunded liability of close to $60 trillion over a 75 year period. The welfare state doesn't work as we are seeing now in Greece and the rest of Europe.

Seems to me you pretty much “summed” it up.

For it’s no matter whether the funds are somehow authorized to be spent as collected....this is what the American public was sold and this is what they understand....

....let us take this much money out of your salary and hey, we’ll get your employer to match it. We’ll hold the money for you in the event you die and your children need financial care, you become disabled and unable to work, you retire. Then we will give you a monthly check based on what you contributed over the years.

Then in 1965, the era of LBJ, it became a social problem in the time of the Great Society, for elder folk to obtain medical insurance. so LBJ and his minions stipulate the following...

let us take this money out of your salary and again, we’ll get your employer to match. When you retire we will underwrite your health care that would be difficult to obtain for advanced age. We can’t have our elderly dying in the streets, can we?

It’s why the Democrats, or at least partially why, they desperately do not want to affect social security in any way. With Medicare they’re a bit sneakier, robbing the fund because unlike expectations of a regular monthly check, folks only need Medicare oncit in a while.

This year the Part B Medicare co-pay went up $12.00 a year, to my surprise. However, this sort of thing is shrugged off. Take away that monthly check, even with means testing-a communist notion....and they’ll be out in the streets with their rage.

The Democrats, and on some level the Repubs, do not want to have the entire SS population stop in their tracks and ask WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO OUR MONEY??

Nevermind long complicated posts by Freerepublic posters, it’s the bill we were sold at a time in our lives when we were busy working all kinds of hours, raising our kids and, I add softly, it’s not like we had a lot of choice.

At some point a lot of us took advantage of one of the better laws pushed by the GOP, that of the 401K/IRA. So we’ve got years of these sorts of savings in our experience and most retirees, comes time to collect on this money, were NOT told by the holders “sorry, we spent it all.”

We thought the money was being saved, it’s how it was sold to us, and it turned out a lot like giving home mortgages to Crystal and her pimp, the POLITICIANS messed it up.

This is what the American public understands and screeds about how they had a right to spend the money are not going to change the sentiment.