Social Security has ZERO to do with the Deficit.

[Yo_Mama]

27. SS does add to the deficit, it is part of the government, and so forth

The OP was pretty much all wrong.

The SS trust fund is what's called an "intragovernmental trust fund", just like the highway fund, the disability fund, the medicare fund, one of the federal government retirement funds, etc.

There is not any actual separate money or securities in the Trust Fund, just as there aren't in any of the others. There are special securities that by law cannot be sold.

The only way the SS Trust can withdraw "money" from its fund is to take one of those special bonds and hand it over to Treasury, which then has to get actual money to give the SS administration so they can pay benefits. They do so either by taking money out of general funds (if the general fund is running a surplus), or by borrowing it, (if the debt limit hasn't been exceeded and they still have the authority to do so).

Now if the taxes being paid in and the contributions being paid in were still enough to fund SS benefit payments that wouldn't be true, but that is no longer true and apparently won't be true for decades.

So, in fact, SS does add to the current deficit. Right now it doesn't do so by very much, but the time when this was supposed to happen was supposed to be later - nearly a decade later.

If the Fed never stops buying Treasuries, the buying power of the dollar will be diluted but benefits could be paid for a very long time to come. If the Fed stops buying Treasuries, the situation becomes more difficult.