Social Security is a government program with dedicated funding and its own accounting.

Workers pay FICA payroll taxes. We keep track of that money. Workers pay $100x this month. We mail out checks to retirees for $90x. That leaves $10x surplus.

First thing to note: The supposed Social Security Crisis involves pretty much the only thing in the government that has a surplus. (This is a clue... when people see a surplus in anything their minds turn to how to grab it. Note how the rich managed to appropriate the Clinton budget surplus in the form of Bush/Cheney tax cuts.)

Okay... that $10x surplus is put into a dedicated fund. Then the rest of the government takes that $10x, spends it and replaces it with an IOU.

Is Social Security solvent?

This is actually two questions.

1) Did we put enough int the piggy bank to pay for SS?

Yes. Social Security is solvent until 2037. It is entirely possible that if we change nothing Social Security will remain solvent past 2037. In fact, it may remain solvent for as long as we can project with no changes.

And if Social Security became "insolvent" that would not mean checks would stop. If the system takes in $100 and has to pay out $103 it is insolvent insofar as it is not taking in enough to meet its obligations but it is still able to meet 97% of its obligations.

In that scenario benefits would have to be be cut to make up the difference. That would be the worst thing that ever happened. If the accounting forced a reduction in benefits in 2040 (which is not known to be the case, BTW) it would be the worst thing that ever happened. The Earth would crash into the sun or something.

Since the *possibility* of having to reduce benefits 30 years from now is the worst thing ever we have a crisis.

How can we solve the terrible crisis of maybe cutting benefits someday?

Cut benefits before 2040 for real.

See... problem solved.

If your head just exploded then SS is more solvent because you will not be able to collect on any of the money you paid in during your life before your head exploded.)

2) Is there enough in the piggy bank to pay for SS?

We put in either enough or very, very nearly enough. Unfortunately it is not there. It was taken and spent on clever things like the Iraq War.

And now we see the REAL Social Security crisis. The SS money went into general revenue in exchanges for IOUs. And if we had to pay back those IOUs it would be inconvenient.

We have a big deficit. Someday (when the economy is functioning better) we will have to raise revenues or cut spending.

A big part of what we have to pay out will be SS. So of course it is only right that SS should be cut...

Except that SS, unlike everything else, actually pays for all or very nearly all of itself.

The big coming deficit crisis of 2040 or whenever will not have been caused by SS. It will have been caused by the strain of paying back the IOUs for all that money we took.

The "crisis" is that 1) the government has a whopping deficit and 2) the government has to pay back the SS IOUs.

What sort of moral degenerate does a person have to be to see a nexus there?

The government is behaving like those insurance companies that collect premiums for decades then skip town when there is a hurricane.

The money to pay back the IOUs is just a normal, fungible dollar in the federal budget. It is utterly morally and intellectual bankrupt to think of repaying a fricking DEBT (an IOU) as a favor! It is no different from any other dollar the government is obliged to pay out.

Cutting SS benefits to paper over the inconvenience of having to repay a debt has nothing to do with Social Security. It has to do with how to repay a debt.

Okay... so we are sitting in the future and we have to come up with, say $20 Trillion. Well, we can cut SS benefits or cut something else or raise taxes. These are choices. These choices determine who will be stuck with paying back the IOUs.

Cutting SS benefits is not fiscal austerity, IT IS A TRANSFER PAYMENT FROM THE POOL OF FICA TAX PAYERS TO THE POOL OF INCOME AND CAPITAL GAINS TAX PAYERS.

And that is why it is favored by the rich and opposed by the poor. For some dumb-ass reason poor people don't like having money they paid diverted to the better-off.

All this you have posted fails to address that point of no return where, because of congressional irresponsibilities, the country cannot pay it's bills nor can you raise taxes enough to keep the real necessities like police forces, schools, etc. going.

At that point Social Security is extremely vulnerable. My advise to you is to not count on that being part of your retirement.

A White House-created commission is considering proposals to raise the retirement age and take other steps to shore up the finances of Social Security, prompting key players to prepare for a major battle over the program's future.

In addition to raising the retirement age, which is now set to reach age 67 in 2027, specific cuts under consideration include lowering benefits for wealthier retires and trimming annual cost-of-living increases, perhaps only for wealthier retirees, people familiar with the talks said.

The only fix necessary for a projected problem 27 years from now is the one Obama promised on the campaign trail; lift the earnings cap subject to ss tax.

This seems to me to be a real no brainer. So what's the argument against doing so?

There are only a finite set of possible solutions

I have been.

2037 may seem like a long way away, but if you were born after 1970, tweaks need to be made. I'm a late baby boomer, and there will be a large number of my generation added to this group. People born in 1960 will be 77 in 2037. There have been a number of tweaks over the years to extend out it's solvency.

Even though I also think our military spending is way out-of-control, I cannot imagine a group that would make retirement benefits as a budgetary item.