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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (69767)	5/4/2018 2:44:38 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 363046

What it is, is a program that takes current tax income (plus borrowing), and pays out money. Every single dollar it pays out comes from current taxes or borrowing. The trust fund is not some external store of value that the government can draw on, its important for legal and to a lesser extent accounting reasons, but it isn't a savings account the government can go to in order to withdraw money for benefit payments. Every dollar "from the trust fund" is a dollar from current taxpayers or buyers of treasury securities. The question is not whether or not we should borrow, but whether we should borrow from Americans, or more from China. The trust fund doesn't reduce federal borrowing from Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Arabs, Koreans etc. (or from Americans). It doesn't shift the borrowing between them (which is determined by who decides to buy the securities at he prices the government offers). It has no effect on federal borrowing except that when the accounting value in it runs down to zero it will cause a reduction in benefits of close to a quarter (if the law isn't changed before then) and that will have an effect on borrowing (reducing the amount that has to be borrowed by reducing government spending)