David Axelrod: “This is not the time” to have a plan to reform Social Security

Hotair ^ | 09/24/2012 | Ed Morrissey

[Yosemitest]

[Gil4]

Bad news does not get better with age.

A stitch in time saves nine. (We need several million stitches now, but better to sew before it’s billions.)

Now is not the time - the time has long since passed. Now is just the best time that is still available to us.

[kabar]

1965 .. Lyndon Johnson took SS out of a(n) (untouchable) fund and made it General Fund so the politicians can more openly steal.

A myth. The Social Security Trust Fund was created in 1939 as part of the Amendments enacted in that year. From its inception, the Trust Fund has always worked the same way. The Social Security Trust Fund has never been "put into the general fund of the government."

Most likely this myth comes from a confusion between the financing of the Social Security program and the way the Social Security Trust Fund is treated in federal budget accounting. Starting in 1969 (due to action by the Johnson Administration in 1968) the transactions to the Trust Fund were included in what is known as the "unified budget."

This means that every function of the federal government is included in a single budget. This is sometimes described by saying that the Social Security Trust Funds are "on-budget." This budget treatment of the Social Security Trust Fund continued until 1990 when the Trust Funds were again taken "off-budget." This means only that they are shown as a separate account in the federal budget. But whether the Trust Funds are "on-budget" or "off-budget" is primarily a question of accounting practices--it has no affect on the actual operations of the Trust Fund itself.