The situation with Social Security is somewhat complex, and is ripe for miss-characterization to suit a particular agenda. In spite of some misgivings about how the article is written, here are a couple of paragraphs I find interesting:
At the same time, what matters is not the total national debt, but the net debt after excluding intragovernmental debt, which is what the Trust Fund is. Activists might repeat "the government bonds in the Trust Fund are real assets" until they're blue in the face, but each dollar of FICA surplus, back when it existed, decreased the degree to which the federal government needed to borrow from outside, and each dollar of Trust Fund bond redeemed, is another dollar which the requires the issuing of more bonds.
What's more, while the Trust Fund bonds are "real" and the government would no more default on them than they would default on any other bonds, a default is wholly unnecessary. All that's needed for the government to keep the Trust Fund bonds "unspent" is to reduce Social Security spending, in whatever manner it chooses: a boost in the retirement age, a benefit phase-out based on other income, an across-the-board haircut, or whatever other mechanism it chooses. If Congress changed the law tomorrow, all of those beautiful Trust Fund bonds could be kept in perpetuity, never to be redeemed.
Yes, Social Security Does Indeed Add To The Federal Deficit
