[Ron2]

Congress needs to lock up Social Security and pay back everything they have taken from the program. This program should sustain itself if they leave it alone. Basically, they have stolen peoples retirement and used it for whatever they wanted to. Pay it back with a huge interest and penalty for using it.

[Red Badger]

Pay it back with what? The government has no money except that which we earn, and they take off the top in taxes. The government is US...........

[kabar]

Congress needs to lock up Social Security and pay back everything they have taken from the program. This program should sustain itself if they leave it alone. Basically, they have stolen peoples retirement and used it for whatever they wanted to. Pay it back with a huge interest and penalty for using it.

You couldn't be more wrong. The program is unsustainable as now structured. In 1950, there were 16 workers to every retiree, today there are 3.3, and in 2030 there will be 2 workers for every retiree. Almost half of the national debt is comprised of the SS Trust Fund, which is filled with non-market T-bills, which are really unfunded liabillities and not assets.

In order to "pay it back," we would have to borrow the money, which increases the costs of the servicing the national debt, which takes 17 cents of every federal dollar. SS is a pay as you go system and should be made a regular part of the budget. The SS "surplus" starts declining in 2008 and will go in the red in 2017. The only real long term solution is private accounts.

[buffyt]

If they would have done the SS program like FDR had planned it in the first place, it was supposed to be privatized. But once Congress got their grimy little hands on it, it got wasted.

[kenth]

That isn't retirement money, it's a Ponzi scheme. Your money is gone the second the government snatches it away from you. You're right in a way though, they have stolen your retirement money, but they stole it through the SS system. Had you been able to keep that money all these years, you would have been able to invest it on your own for retirement.

One other thought, I wonder how many leftist boomers who pushed for abortion, and continue to this day, now fret over there not being enough younger Americans to pay for their retirement.

[zeugma]

This program should sustain itself if they leave it alone.

Sorry, but sheer demographics kill SS. We're not having enough kids to support a ponzi scheme like this. 

[Jacquerie]

What's the problem? Pelosi Galore, her party and AARP assured us in 2005 that Soc Sec was solvent forever. /sarc

[gogeo]

Congress needs to lock up Social Security and pay back everything they have taken from the program. This program should sustain itself if they leave it alone. Basically, they have stolen peoples retirement and used it for whatever they wanted to. Pay it back with a huge interest and penalty for using it...

You really shouldn't try to participate in a discussion you obviously know nothing about. The projections used to declare SS insolvent assume the money has all been repaid...and SS funds are currently invested in interest bearing US bonds.