Except it wouldn’t, cause it’s actually all the general fund, the whole separate balance for SocSec is a fiction.
It was a fiction the instant the program started.
Correct!
Ideally it would be kept in a separate account but I got a bridge to sell anyone who thinks this is the case.
I have a friend who actually thinks that there is a separate Social Security fund. She's all upset about this tax cut. <
Of course it's the media that's pumping her full of this nonsense.
What an idjit.
Technically Social Security holds US Treasuries in an account classified under Intragovernmental Holdings, but those are effectively an IOU from the government to the government. When (not if) Social Security goes from revenue-positive to revenue-negative, they’re supposed to liquidate those assets for cash to cover the difference. However, doing so requires that you find buyers who actually have money they’re willing to part with and it also means you have competing sources dumping those US Treasuries onto the open market (US debt financing as well as Social Security), which will affect pricing.
Invariably, this whole Ponzi scheme becomes more and more obviously fatally flawed over time until the whole thing collapses. We have a choice to make between fixing our budget and shedding debt vs continuing as we are and watching as our debts grow so large that merely servicing them costs more than our entire GDP.