General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I Love Social Security [View all]Babel_17
(5,400 posts)If the budget did away with paying any SS payments for 2014 it still wouldn't reduce the debt. The money would still be owed. I think people conflate what we have to budget and what our liabilities are.
I can cross my rent off this months budget but I will still have to pay it eventually.
It gets tricky in that Congress gets to set the payments. So yes, just like the guardians of a child actor, they can play with the books and pile up the money without paying it out.
The inescapable reality is that the institution of government made an eminently fair arrangement with several generations of the population.
If government today wants to start to attempt to renege then they need to call all the government between now and then thieves, or conspirators of thieves. That still wouldn't eliminate the legal obligation but it would set the stage for government declaring bankruptcy. Which is a joke concept, given the wealth laying around in the coffers of those who've been buddies of that same government, all these years.