Social Security, How Do We Make it Secure Now and for Generations to Come

Social Security, How Do We Make it Secure Now and for Generations to Come

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What is the purpose of Social Security? According to the testimony of Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities before the Senate finance Committee on February 9, 1999, “...the Treasury takes the surplus payroll tax revenues the Social Security Trust Fund is receiving each year and provides the trust fund with Treasury bonds in return. The third problem threatening the future of Social Security, as the 2004 Social Security Administration Trustees report tells us, is that the interest return on these bonds, is a mere 6 percent. In his February 12, 2005 radio address, the President states that beginning in 2018, the Social Security Trust Fund will have to find additional revenue to pay beneficiaries. What he has failed to mention is that 2018 is the year when Social Security Trust Fund Surpluses will be needed to pay these benefits. If we let the government fix the Social Security Trust System so that the monies owed to it are not paid back, then our prior contributions were not borrowed, they were stolen.”

The government must be barred from borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund. The best way to institute Social Security Reform is to engage in overall fiscal responsibility. Educate yourself about the facts regarding the Social Security Trust Fund. Let your representatives know that you want the government to stop using the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other government programs.

President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935.