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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (361127)	12/3/2007 1:06:43 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1577896

Al, > I don't believe that SS surpluses can be put away or invested, and I remember reading that legally this is how the SS trust fund was setup, so, I believe that the surplus was used to pay down national debt...but I am not sure. All of the SS surplus gets put into treasury bonds. Whether those are new bonds or just bonds that replace those held outside of the government is the question, and that's determined by the needs of the non-SS part of the budget. The net effect is that during three out of the four years of "surplus," the debt actually increased because the non-SS, non-Medicare part of the budget still ran a deficit. What happens, though, is that a lot of the debt essentially gets bought out of outside holders and into the hands of the SS "trust fund." The total debt still increases because some of the T-bills have to be new ones to cover the off-SS budget deficit, but the part of the debt that doesn't represent the "trust fund" is reduced. > The main point is that ... ... you want to run back to the fact that Bush is not a fiscal conservative by any definition, which I agree with. Which of course wasn't my point to begin with, nor did my point even conflict with yours. Tenchusatsu

To: Alighieri who wrote (361127)	12/13/2007 4:57:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577896

A 25% reduction extends SS solvency beyond 2070. A 25% reduction is rather major and politically very different. SS is NOT "bankrupt" as bush and the republicans would have you believe. Not in the sense of having to (or even will have to) file for bankruptcy, but in the more general sense of not having enough funds to cover its obligations it is. Being able to change the law so that its obligations are reduced and/or its assets are increased doesn't mean that under current law it really isn't solvent. But really I don't think that is the issue, and if it was it would be easy to fix. Since the feds are both the debtor and the creditor for the "trust fund", the amount in the fund can be manipulated upwards or downwards with little in the way of real world consequences (its similar to me moving money between my checking account and my savings account). The problem is not the "solvency of the trust fund", its how much we are going to have to spend in the future to meet current promises. To the extent that we change what we promise the problem can indeed be resolved, but politically its a minefield.