[Ratman83]

but it was a dedicated tax and the initial obligations remain ~ it must be spent on payments, or it must be refunded. You simply cannot write it off the books ~ or else!

Actually the USSC has ruled that the government can change the rules on payments any time they want to, so a refund does not have to be paid.

[muawiyah]

That was a very narrow ruling about 'benefit payments' (I believe in one of the "notch baby" cases) ~ no one has ever asked USSC about the constitutionality of a total refund of unspent payments ~ because that question has never come up.

The Fifth Amendment is still in the Constitution.

Now, about the US government and its assets ~ not just its national accounts but its assets ~ there are assets that can be used to settle all debts.

Typical of so many Freepers you and others didn't follow Newt Gingrich ~ he had this little litany on oil shale in the intra-mountain West which is available for oil using current technology, and is owned by the US government. He placed its initial value as in the trillions of dollars.

No reason the Social Security debt cannot be redeemed with public assets.

People who want to simply write off the Social Security debt and the Social Security obligations think they've invented a new way of stealing which will not be defined that way ~ but sorry gang, theft is theft ~ there's a whole huge part of the law called "CONVERSION" and that's about every sort of theft there ever was or ever can be. So don't even think about it.