Posted on 03/17/2026 10:56:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’m old enough to remember when Al Gore coined the term “lockbox” as a euphemism for how he was going to protect the Social Security surplus.
The year was 2000, and Gore was the incumbent Vice President, campaigning for the presidency. His administration had just recorded a budget surplus of $236 billion, the largest in American history still to this day. More than two-thirds of the surplus, or $160 billion, was created by the revenue from Social Security taxes exceeding payments to Social Security recipients.
Vice President Gore wanted to save that Social Security surplus for the future, while his opponent, then Texas Governor George W. Bush, wanted to return the surplus to American citizens through tax cuts.
Gore was memorably parodied by Darrell Hammond on Saturday Night Live, a performance that helped turn the word “lockbox” into a lasting piece of SNL lore.
Unfortunately, American retirees will not be laughing now.
Of particular interest to me, though, was Swagel emphasizing that Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund would be exhausted by the end of fiscal year 2031.
That is only 5 years away!
As recently as 2022, when CBO published a similar ten-year fiscal outlook, the forecast was that the Trust Fund would last until 2035.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
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So I guess I have five years to find a job.
What happened to the 40 years of IOU’s in that “Lock Box”?
Or learn smash & grab
Hmm, why would that matter?
Recipients should be paid from previously invested contributions they made while working.
The revenue would be put into investments for those not yet retired.
So the relation of one to the other shouldn't matter.
Unless it's a ponzi scheme...
There was never a trust fund..
An honest audit of what $ is there or can be gathered and a a total sum vs a total of what each eligible recipient has actually paid in and a lump sum payout be it 150% or 15% and be done with the program entirely.
I am on social security. I dare them, actually, I triple dog dare them to let the fund run dry and cut payments. That would be incentive enough for a real, angry storming of the capitol, not the Jan 6th site-seer type event.
It was out of money 37 trillion dollars ago.
“So I guess I have five years to find a job.”
Add a Learing Center in your garage. You’ll be rich!
This is something Trump will address. Cleaning up the roles of recipients will go along way to solving this problem
Back when SS was brought into being, it was “promised” that those funds were earmarked for SS distribution only, but then politicians saw that pot of money and started spending it as part of the general funds. I think that, if Congress wants to fund any new spending, it needs to pass a tax for that program. That would tied the tax to the program and the program to whomever proposed it in the first place. If we don’t start balancing the budget and stop Congress from buying votes, this Republic is doomed.
They’ve been telling us that for decades. Also climate heating up, climate will freeze us. Coffee bad, coffee good.
Largely in part that we’re all AGING and many more are drawing SS than ever before.
I expect some tweaking in the future. Plenty of ways to keep it solvent, though Congress never met a wasteful ‘program’ they wouldn’t fund! Cutting elsewhere to save SS WILL be a HUGE problem for them.
“A growing number of retirees are living on Social Security alone”
22 million, as of 2025, live on SS as their sole income in retirement.
https://www.retirementliving.com/a-growing-number-of-retirees-are-living-on-social-security-alone
The ‘trust fund’ simply means the receipts collected monthly will not be enough to pay out what is allocated monthly. Politicians have long ago spent the Social Security reserve money funds.
A professor at LSU explained it to us. The politicians pass a bill that spends the funds and the goverment withdraws the funds and drops in an IOU in its place.
This is why I planned my retirement so that I could easily survive even if SS income dropped to zero.
I’ve been hearing this scare story my whole life. While Trump is in power, the media is going to run with this and infer that it’s all Trump’s fault. Poppycock.
Neither party wants the blame for crashing the Social Security system. The GOP is certainly too smart to allow this to happen.
Oh I suspect you are in for a rude surprise...
Cleaning up the roles of recipients will go along way to solving this problem
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No. It will not. The problem is math and the myth of recipients that don’t have the necessary quarters to get benefits is silly.
Math. There has to be more influx or less payout. It will be mostly the latter, and will be mostly upper end recipients among the latter. They will be cut. No avoiding it.
Math.
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