NPR finally admits the Social Security trust fund is a fiction

I heard this over the weekend but there wasn't a transcript or audio up:

For the past 25 years or so, the amount of money the government has raised through those taxes has been greater than what it's been spending to fund Social Security.

...

The government has invested all that money in Treasury bonds, which are traditionally considered among the safest investments in the world.

But a Treasury bond, remember, is the way the government borrows money. So the government is lending the Social Security surplus to itself. And the obligation to repay those loans is the trust funds.

"They are nothing like any trust fund that any one of us would think of," says Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation. "It conjures up an image of really holding savings, and it doesn't do that at all."

Of course the GOP has been saying this since Bob Dole ran for President and everyone acted like it was a big lie, now that a Dem President may be endorsing major changes to Social Security suddenly it's the truth.

crossposted at doubleplusundead.com

A musical selection that seems to fit this topic well:

posted by Open Blogger at 11:23 PM

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