The Social Security Trust Fund has not been 'looted'. [View all]

[HiPointDem]

By the terms of the original SS legislation, any excess SS taxes must be borrowed by the federal government in exchange for federal securities. Those securities are what's in the TF.

The borrowed money goes into the federal budget and is spent on all the things the federal government spends on.

TF securities are redeemed (i.e. paid back) regularly, with interest.

This is not 'looting;' this is the way SS has always operated.

The problem came when a 1983 BIPARTISAN congress, on the recommendations of the BIPARTISAN GREENSPAN commission, voted to increase SS taxes significantly above the amount needed to fund current retirees and maintain a normal cushion. This was supposed to 'save' SS and 'prefund' the boomers' retirements. Supposedly the money would be paid back when the boomers began to retire -- in other words, the Trust Fund would be drawn down at that time & return to more historically normal levels.

The result was 30 years of ever-accumulating surpluses, which are now represented by the over $2.5 TRILLION dollars in securities the TF now holds -- an amount unprecedented both in real and inflation-adjusted dollars in the history of the TF. THIS WAS THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK, & NOW IS THE TIME THAT THE BORROWED MONEY WAS SUPPOSED TO START GETTING REPAID.

So what's the problem? Rich people and corporations don't want to repay it. They want to tell you it has already been 'looted,' whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. THEY WANT TO SCARE YOU INTO THINKING THE LOOTING HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE & THE MONEY CAN NEVER BE REPAID.

But it HASN'T been looted; everything is working just as it was supposed to in the bill signed by SAINT RONNIE. NOW IT'S TIME TO REPAY.

IT'S NOT LOOTED UNLESS THEY DON'T PAY IT BACK. RICH PEOPLE LIKE STEVE FORBES ARE THE POTENTIAL LOOTERS. DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT.