How come the government can take money out of Social Security and spend it?

[jeeper_peeper321]

OK, lets kill the myth.

Just where would you want the federal government to keep all the excess SS revenue ?

Should they invest it in the stock market ? And maybe lose it all if the market crashed?

Hide it in mattress's ?

All excess SS revenue is used to purchase US Treasury Bonds.

The same bonds anyone Else is allowed to invest in.

The government doesn't dip in the SS revenue, they don't borrow from it.

The government just doesn't treat the income generated from the excess SS revenue's purchase of US Treasuries, any different than they do any other kind of revenue.

But, just as the federal government must redeem US Treasuries that have matured, they have to redeem the US Treasuries that were purchased with excess SS revenue.

Right now, the US government has about 3 trillion dollars worth of Treasury bonds from excess SS revenue.

These treasury bonds will be cashed in and used to keep paying full SS benefits starting around 2017, when there no longer are any excess SS revenues, because we will be paying out more in SS benefits than we collect in SS tax revenue.

When SS started, there were 15 people paying into SS for every person collecting benefits, today there are 5 people paying in for every person collecting benefits.

In another 20 years, there will be 3 people paying into SS, for every person collecting SS benefits.

That is because people are living about 25 years longer now, than they did back in the 1930's.

So for a answer to your question,

All excess SS revenue, is invested,

It is invested in US Treasury Bonds instead of the stock market.