ldyb2 wrote:
First of all People do have their SS taken out of their checks to the tune of I believe 7.5% (I could be wrong) I was under the impression that SS is not in the General Fund but in some other fund that collects interest..
For the vast majority of the program's life, Social Security has been funded by the FICA taxes collected from workers. In fact, since the 1980s, the FICA taxes collected have been in surplus of the amount necessary to pay benefits. This surplus was "invested" in non-negotiable Treasury bills and held in the Social Security Trust Fund. There are about $2.4 trillion worth of these T-bills in the fund.

The reason "invested" has quotes around it is that these T-bills are nothing more than a promise that future Congresses will assure there is income available to redeem them and use that money to pay future benefits. In that we are a nation with a $1.3 trillion annual deficit (we spend more every year than comes in) and there is no end in sight for these deficits, the government has no way to redeem these T-bills other than to borrow more money, cut other programs or print more money (qualitative easing).

To make matters worse, along with the recession, the Congress for last year and this year has cut the FICA collected by 2% which means instead of having FICA cover expenses until 2018, these taxes have been insufficient to cover benefits both last year and this year and every year in the foreseeable future.

The Repubs need to stop the war effort and take those billions of dollars spent each month and transfer into the General fund and leave Social net Programs alone..
The general fund is in the red to the tune of $1,300 billion and the cost of the war in Afghanistan for the last two years has been about $170 billion each year. That means if we had stopped the war two years ago, this year's deficit would be $1,130 billion and Social Security would still be broken. This also assumes Congress would not have considered this as a "peace dividend" and spent that $170 billion elsewhere.

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson