Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (
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"Steve W." <Dugdug56@what.com> wrote:
> What I want to know is who actually believes there is a "Trust
> Fund" There never has been or will be one, Unless the individual
> accounts happen. ALL monies go into the general fund. They are
> then budgeted out to pay for whatever. SS is just another line
> item in the budget, just like defense, and foreign aid. There is
> NO SUCH THING as a separate account just for SS. Anyone
> who claims that the "account was raided" is a fool, it is
> impossible to raid something that isn't there in the first place.
> ...(snipped)...
> The former president screwed this up by deciding to sell a
> lot of short term bonds to make it APPEAR that he had balanced
> the budget. All he really did was hide the debt. In one way I would
> have loved to see Al G. win and see how he would have handled
> the royal screw job Clinton gave the next person elected. Instead
> we have a man who gets handed a bag of lemons and folks start
> bitching when he grabs a blender to make lemonade.
Unfortunately, Steve, you're blaming the wrong person. I used to work as a
trainer for the Social Security Admin in the 70's and 80's, training the
Service Reps, Data Technicians, and Claims Reps (the people who take the
claims and calculated the benefits), so was very well versed in the topic,
the benefit formulas, and the actuarial statistics.
The Social Security Trust Fund was off-budget from its inception in 1939
until the early 80's. There was a huge surplus going into it in the 70's
and 80's as the baby-boomers became well established in the work force. The
surplus was, in fact, being invested. Social Security fund managers and
actuaries fully understood the fund would have to be saved and built up
because they expected a negative cash flow by about 2010-2020, when the
baby-boomers reached retirement age. With proper investing, the actuaries
figured they'd be able to keep the program solvent until something like
2040-2050, as I recall.
But the fund managers aren't politicians. To finance his huge military
build-up, Reagan hit upon the idea of bringing the fund on-budget, where the
surplus made his otherwise huge budget deficit look a little better. Once
on-budget, the "raiding" began, with the incoming surplus being reallocated
to other budget items. Since the Trust Fund is still technically separate,
at least on paper, whatever was reallocated was replaced with IOUs to the
Trust Fund. Bush-I and Clinton didn't dare call Reagan out on the budget
fakery because it would have been political suicide--too many people thought
Reagan was God. Besides, the trust fund surplus was making their own
budgets look better, so why rock the boat?
But now, the situation will soon reverse, with more money soon to be going
out than is coming in. Politicians--regardless of who is in the White
House--would rather see it off-budget again because it will soon begin
making the real budget deficit look worse. Bush-I, Clinton, and Bush-II
haven't done much to fix the problem (and the Bush-II plan is particularly
misleading), but none of them created the problem, either. That was the
work of Reagan.
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