Contemplate what this statement means: "Most of our long term debt and deficit has to do with Social Security". It's a pretty banal falsehood. Social Security has never contributed a dime to any deficit or debt. It's fully self-funding and has been for the past 70-plus years. Even in the worst-case scenario, where we don't lift the cap on payroll taxes, Social Security won't contribute to the debt or deficit - it will merely pay 75% of due benefits after the year 2037.
What's truly stunning, and should be terrifying to the 85% of Americans who oppose Social Security cuts, is who believes that "most of our long term debt and deficit has to do with Social Security".
Whomever believes this statement to be true, or claims to believe it true, or would actually utter it, is not someone I trust to guard my Social Security. That person would have to be a liar, or someone looking for an excuse to raid Social Security to pay off unpaid bills. Unpaid bills that have come from lost revenues. Revenues lost from, say, tax cuts for millionaires.
The President of the United States believes that the fully-self-funding Social Security program contributes to the deficit and the debt. He said as much just the other day on NPR . He believes it so much that he wants to prove it to you by selling a you a tax compromise, which will, for the first time since I've been alive anyway, actually cause Social Security to contribute to the deficit. His compromise includes a 2% Social Security Payroll Tax "holiday", which will be made up from General Fund revenues.
You follow that? He is messing with the self-funding mechanism of Social Security, the political and fiscal bedrock of this incredibly successful program, to provide a tax cut which could just as easily come from the General Fund like Bush's famous rebate checks.
I don't trust him with my retirement insurance, do you?
from NPR:
OBAMA: Actually, I think that if you talk to economists, both conservative and liberal, what they'll say is the problem is not next year. The problem is, how are we dealing with our medium-term debt and deficit, and how are we dealing with our long-term debt and deficit? And most of that has to do with entitlements, particularly Social Security and Medicaid.
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