The Social Security Trust Fund has more than $1.5 trillion in surplus. This money is invested in in US treasury bills. Those bills pay the trust fund around $120 billion in interest annually. Since 2010, as the baby boomers retire, the trust fund has paid out more money in benefits than it takes in via tax dollars. So the corporate propaganda machine, such as the Oregon newspaper, on behalf of the 1 percent, has thrown out fear in the form of disguised news and proclaimed the trust fund is going broke because there is another yearly deficit. Naturally, the editors don’t want you to know about that $120 billion a year coming into the trust fund, because if they did count that money, they’d strangely discover the trust fund took in more dollars than it paid out. Ergo, there has been a yearly surplus, not a deficit as the propaganda machine has repeatedly and falsely proclaimed.
It is true that some so-called experts expect that $1.5 trillion to evaporate into nothingness about the year 2040 because the baby boomers will be retired. But that’s what the task force appointed by President Ronald Reagan set out to do thirty years ago. As of 2040, the trust fund will still be taking in sufficient tax dollars to pay out 86 percent of forecast benefits. One way to close the gap and pay 100 percent of benefits is simply to do what Senator Sanders suggests above.
And why not do that? The rich have reaped all the benefits of federal economic legislation during the past 34 years. The Koch Brothers and others declared war against the middle class, and against the United States, decades ago, and via legislation and the corruption of government, they’ve redistributed massive amounts of income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent since 1981.
It’s time for a little pay back. And thank you President Reagan.
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