As the Report also recognizes, there is another law, the Antideficiency Act, which "prohibits government spending in excess of available funds" and reactionaries would undoubtedly try to use that law if the "Trust Funds" were depleted, but "Social Security beneficiaries would remain legally entitled to full, timely benefits and could take legal action to claim the balance of their benefits."
As Stephanie Kelton says: "There is no economic justification for cuts to either program [SS&M]" on the basis of the solvency of any trust fund, "The decision is entirely political."
By the way: Yes, "entitlement" a word we should stop avoiding and step right into. As defined by the Congress, an entitlement program is one we have a right to as citizens. Isn't the whole point that healthcare and a decent pension for old age and disabilities should be a right? Isn't a right something we're entitled to?
See Alan Nasser again on the lingering legacy of FDR's conservative framing, which too many leftists have joined the Demopublican mainstream in accepting:
Roosevelt's repeated characterization of social insurance as an 'earned right' condenses in two words the contradiction implicit in American elites' construal of social democratic benefits. '[E]arned right' is an oxymoron. One has a right by virtue of what one is; one needn't do anything to have a right. American citizenship bestows certain rights. To claim these entitlements one need only be an American citizen.
A right. Something for which one needn't do anything, including pay a tax.
Which brings me to the larger point implied in Eisner's, "The Treasury can pay out all that Social Security provides while the accountants declare the funds more and more in the red." What Eisner says of the trust funds here is also true of the General Fund. Thus, Mike Norman's, "There is no financial reason why the federal government cannot just credit our bank accounts in any amount that it wants," while the accountants declare it's in deficit.
This is the point, which has been known to economists for at least 74 years ("Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete," 1946), and has been highlighted recently by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) (and which I've dealt with at greater length in two previous essays ): taxes do not fund federal government programs.
Taxes, whether registered in the spreadsheet labelled Trust Fund or General Fund, are not real revenue that "pays for" any government program.
Here's what all the rigmarole about "trust funds" comes down to:
Two parallel but separate things are going on.
1. They, the managers of the monetary system create a spreadsheet labelled "SS Trust Fund " (or "General Fund," or whatever). They mark down the numbers in workers' paychecks, and mark the up numbers in that spreadsheet.
2. They spend/create money (e. g., SS benefits), as required by law.
They then say the money spent/created in 2 must not exceed the number shown on the spreadsheet in 1, and, furthermore, that the money spent/created in action 2 comes from thing 1.
Debate ensues, forever, between progressives and conservatives, about how to get those numbers to "balance." They have won. The terms of the debate guarantee it.
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