If Social Security taxes were increased in 1983 to ease the burden of a smaller generation tasked with providing benefits to a larger number of longer living elders, why would elected leaders borrow and spend the surplus?

The Treasury Department has for decades

borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund

 to finance government operations.

 

 If it is no longer able to do so

 it could be forced to borrow an additional $700 billion

 over the next decade

 from China, Japan and other investors

 

"Over the past 25 years,

 the government has gotten used to the fact

 that Social Security is providing free money

to make the rest of the deficit look smaller." said Andrew Biggs

a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

 

 "Now they've essentially got to pay their own way

 at least a little more fully..."

 

"Instead of Social Security subsidizing the rest of the budget,

the rest of the budget will have to subsidize Social Security."

 

Recession Puts a Major Strain On Social Security Trust Fund

As Payroll Tax Revenue Falls, So Does Surplus

Lori Montgomery

Washington Post

 

If Bernard Madoff

distributed money received from new investors to older investors,

until there wasn’t enough money to continue,

 does Social Security operate under the same structure

with mandatory participation?

 

If a private financial institution

 were as reckless with its fiduciary responsibility

 as Congress has been with Social Security and Medicare,

 there would be howls of indignation, demands for regulation

 and calls for the resignation and prosecution of those responsible.

 

Arnold Kling

 

Was it justifiable for the baby boom and their elders

to promise themselves tens of trillions of unfunded benefits

like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,

for future generations to pay for?