It's mobilization time again, folks.

[jeff47]

35. You don't understand it because the people involved are lying.

Social Security has no effect on the deficit or debt. It's budgeted completely independently from the general budget.

Yes, the Social Security trust fund buys US debt with any extra money it has, but that doesn't make more debt. You could argue that it results in lower interest rates on our debt, but it's not clear that interest rates would go up much if Social Security wasn't buying debt.

Add to this the predictions about Social Security's solvency: It's been 20 years from running out of money for the last 30 years or so. Turns out the people predicting doom are relying on things like US GDP growing far slower than it has over the last 100 years.

However, the people who claim to be concerned about debt are lying about that concern. What they're concerned about is their political philosophy. In their mind, the government can never do any social good. Programs like Social Security and Medicare demonstrate this philosophy is wrong. So they desperately need to dismantle those programs.

They can't dismantle them through the front door - the programs are too popular. So the plan is to chip away pieces from each programs until they can claim they are entitlements for the poor. That will make the programs unpopular enough that they can destroy them to preserve their political philosophy.

Some Democrats propose giving an inch in order to take the programs "off the table". This is moronic. The programs will never be "off the table" until the Republicans destroy these programs. Republican political philosophy demands it.