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Whatever Happened to the Trust Fund?
Posted by Randy | July 18, 2011

A column in the Wall Street Journal today answers the question “Whatever happened to the Social Security trust fund?”

From the column:

...whatever happened to the trust fund?

That's the fund that, according to our politicians, is holding all those Social Security taxes that workers pay. Why can't Congress or Mr. Obama dip into that $2.6 trillion cash hoard to pay benefits until this debt-limit business gets sorted out? After all, as White House budget director Jack Lew put it in a February USA Today op-ed, "Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing."

Not quite. As everyone in Washington knows, the trust fund contains not cash but IOUs. Payroll taxes don't go to some vault in Fort Knox, and they certainly aren't invested. When Social Security runs a surplus, Congress spends the money immediately on something else and then the government claims it owes a debt to itself. Where the money will come from to pay these IOUs is anybody's guess—though Mr. Obama is hoping it will be higher taxes.

You can continue reading the full column here.

I've cosponsored a bill that would restore the integrity of the Social Security trust fund. The bill (H.R. 219) would mandate that Social Security funds are used only to pay Social Security benefits, preventing funds from this critical program from being diverted to other programs.  You can read the text of the bill here.

Do you agree that Social Security funds should only be used to pay Social Security benefits?
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