Social Security has ZERO to do with the Deficit.

[dairydog91]

150. How can a portion of government spending "not be part of the deficit"?

Deficit is the excess of government spending over government revenue. More to the point, if SS benefits exceed what SS gets in revenue through the payroll tax, SS must draw on its trust fund. The trust fund has legal value, but it's "worthless" in terms of removing SS from other government spending because it contains non-marketable assets. If SS held commodities, or stocks, or something else that was marketable, it could sell them to third parties in exchange for cash. It can do no such thing with what it actually has. Hence, in order to cash in the assets in its trust fund, SS must exchange them with the Treasury for tax revenue, borrowed money, or printed money. I'm really wondering how people can claim that a government program directly drawing money from Treasury is "not part of the deficit". Just because there is a legal obligation for Treasury to hand out money when SS comes calling for it does not somehow mean that SS is not drawing from government revenue. As it is, the SS non-marketable securities can only be cashed in with the government, and the government has a legal obligation to exchange them for cash. It's a good guarantee for people on the SS program, since it ensures that trillions of dollars will be coming to them unless the government refuses to honor those securities, but cashing in the securities will very much be a part of federal spending, and hence "part of the deficit".