There is no Social Security crisis.
Republicans are simply manufacturing a crisis to avoid repayment of $2.8 trillion in U.S. government bonds held by Social Security as of 2015.
These U.S. bonds represent amounts borrowed from Social Security to finance U.S. deficits primarily for tax cuts, wars and recession over the past 33 years.
Social Security needs to redeem these bonds between 2017 and 2034, which along with payroll tax revenues will fully fund Social Security benefits until 2034, according to the 2016 Social Security Trust Fund trustees annual report.
Republicans recognize that repayment of this debt to Social Security would require higher income taxes.
Therefore, they intend to avoid such higher income taxes simply by evading repayment of the debt to Social Security.
They can do this by cutting Social Security benefits or increasing Social Security payroll taxes in 2017-18, not in 2034, when Social Security officially becomes insolvent.
This is how it works:
Social Security law provides that debt repayment to Social Security is only permitted for benefit payment purposes, according to the trustees’ report.
Therefore, federal debt repayment to Social Security will be reduced by the amount benefits are cut and payroll taxes raised between 2017 and 2034.
In other words, all or a portion of the $2.8 trillion debt to Social Security could remain unpaid indefinitely as it did for the past 33 years.
Social Security is fully funded to 2034.
Allowing benefit cuts or payroll tax increases before 2034 would be a Republican fraud of the highest order.
This would be just another contemptible Republican scheme to use Social Security taxes to finance tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
Malcolm D. McPhee,
Sequim