Social Security Has About One Decade Left Before It Runs Short of Cash

Hotair ^ | 05/08/2024 | Jazz Shaw

[lightman]

Paging Chicken Little.

[Tzimisce]

I’ll be dead before that day comes, so I don’t care. :)

[GOPJ]

Money’s tight - let’s stop sending money to Ukraine.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Fine. I’ll be 80. Doesn’t mean I’ll get that check at 79. Kicking the can puts both sides at fault. Gonna be awesome.

[dfwgator]

To quote Paulie from Goodfellas, “F___ You, Pay Me!” I put a lot of money into SS over these years.

[SaveFerris]

What? Now you’re talking crazy!

American money for Americans??!!

Uniparty doesn’t like that.

[Harpotoo]

Glad I’m under the RRB!

[SaveFerris]

Tell more people that anchor baby Nikki touched the Third Rail

[PGR88]

[FlyingEagle]

Print more.

[SaveFerris]

[Very soon we will be paying more to cover the interest on that debt than we do on our national defense.]

Keep raising interest rates. People can’t quite figure this out.

Oh it will solve inflation. lol

[thinden]

Adding 30-40,000 “new arrivals” every month & assigning them a SSAN from the git go + guaranteed minimum income + heath ins (medicare/medicaid?) + room & board will help drain the social security “trust fund” faster than brandon drained the strategic petroleum reserve

[mythenjoseph]

Awesome! I’ll get 200 k before she falls! heres a thought ! STOP undermining we Americans with non Euro charges...uh Constitution Mean anything ?

[Right_Wing_Madman]

To quote Paulie from Goodfellas, “F___ You, Pay Me!” I put a lot of money into SS over these years.

Social security is still mostly solvent. In 2023, total social security taxes were $1.2 trillion and total payouts were $1.4 trillion.

The problem is all the other taxes only paid for about half of the government expenses. Health costs have exploded and account for the majority of deficit spending.

[lightman]

The COVID cooties aka CoupFlu were an underachiever.

[frank ballenger]

They didn’t specify before or after the climate change doom of life on earth.

[Paladin2]

Where is assistant Demoncrat Mike Johnson?

[frank ballenger]

You said it.

Now don’t change the rules when we’re (allegedly) old.

Or else they should have allowed us to have a retirement investment account to save for each of us as individuals. They didn’t. They took so much money out we all couldn’t afford to do it on our own (most of us) and every year stole all the money (borrowed it) and repaid it the next budget year by the availability of special securities.

The sordid story of How Congress borrows from Social Security————
https://meetbeagle.com/resources/post/which-presidents-borrowed-from-the-social-security-fund#:~:text=Bush%20%27borrowed%27%20%241.37

[woodpusher]

The Social Security funds collected are put into the genreral fund, where they are indistinguishable from other deposited funds. Each month the Treasury makes a deposit into Social Security to make payments to beneficiaries. There is no fund. If the general fund runs short of money, they cannot make a payment to Social Security for the month and people would not get paid. The Social Security fund is a mirage.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33028

Social Security: The Trust Funds

Updated May 16, 2023

Congressional Research Service

RL33028

Summary

[...]

Social Security is financed by payroll taxes paid by covered workers and their employers, federal income taxes paid by some beneficiaries on a portion of their benefits, and interest income from the Social Security trust fund investments. Social Security tax revenues are invested in U.S. government securities (special issues) held by the trust funds, and these securities earn interest. The tax revenues exchanged for the U.S. government securities are deposited into the General Fund of the Treasury and are indistinguishable from revenues in the General Fund that come from other sources. Because the assets held by the trust funds are U.S. government securities, the trust fund balance represents the amount of money owed to the Social Security trust funds by the General Fund of the Treasury. Funds needed to pay Social Security benefits and administrative expenses come from the redemption or sale of U.S. government securities held by the trust funds. The Social Security trust funds represent funds dedicated to pay current and future Social Security benefits. However, it is useful to view the trust funds in two ways: (1) as an internal federal accounting concept and (2) as the accumulated holdings of the Social Security program.

By law, Social Security tax revenues must be invested in U.S. government obligations (debt instruments of the U.S. government). The accumulated holdings of U.S. government obligations are often viewed as being similar to assets held by any other trust on behalf of the beneficiaries.

However, the holdings of the Social Security trust funds differ from those of private trusts because (1) the types of investments the trust funds may hold are limited and (2) the U.S. government is both the buyer and seller of the investments.

This report covers how the Social Security program is financed and how the Social Security trust funds work. The report also covers the projected financial operations of the trust funds using data from the 2023 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. The 2023 annual report reflects the trustees’ understanding of the OASDI program at the start of 2023 and presents projected program and financial information for a 75-year period (2023-2097).

[...]