SS is going cash negative and they need another revenue stream. Their intention is to capture the money we spend on health care, 1/6 of the US economy, to supplement their drunken sailor ways.
Republicans want your money as much as the Democrats, and it is unlikely they will abandon their health care coup any time soon.
The USG did contribute some to the “pissing away” the SS fund. The real problem was and is structural. It was never set up as a proper annuity. It’s a scheme were the working generation pay for the retired generation. As long as the demographics and mortality rates don’t change (They did!), FedGov doesn’t add non-contributors to the pool (The USG did!) it “sort of” works. An individual also can take out way more then they put in. (Like Ida May Fuller did, she only contributed to the system for 3 years and had the audacity to live to be 100 years old!). Functionally it’s a Ponzi Scheme, FedGov can continually tune the edges but all it will do is hold of the day of reckoning. Which will come!
Sad thing is the annuity industry warned FedGov (FDR Administration) this would happen, FedGov didn’t listen.
I think it was deliberate, the idea being “political”, trap the retired generation in being beholden to FedGov (That is FDR Democrats!) & the working generation having to vote for Rats to keep from starving Grandpa & Grandma.