[jack_h]

You’re only considering one part of the system, not the whole. As the GAO puts it[1]:

> Intragovernmental debt holdings represent federal debt owed by Treasury to federal government accounts—primarily federal trust funds such as those established for Social Security and Medicare—that typically have an obligation to invest their excess annual receipts (including interest earnings) over disbursements in federal securities.

> Debt held by the public represents a claim on today’s taxpayers and absorbs resources from today’s economy, meaning that when an investor buys Treasury securities it is not investing that money elsewhere in the economy.

> Intragovernmental debt holdings reflect a claim on taxpayers and the economy in the future. Specifically, when federal government accounts redeem Treasury securities to obtain cash to fund expenditures, Treasury usually borrows from the public to finance these redemptions.

Or to put it simply the excess contributions are lent to the Treasury who uses it for general government expenditures. When it’s time to pay it back the Treasury can either pay it with tax revenue assuming it has excess or has cut spending elsewhere or it will be forced to borrow it. The latter is generally what happens.

I wouldn’t be so quick to call people ill-informed on this subject if I were you.

[1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-107138.pdf

[walkabout]

No, I considered the whole thing. It's worth, in some contexts, pointing out that we borrow to service existing debt, but it remains irrelevant that one of the owners of that debt happens to be the Social Security Trust Fund, if we're talking about the budget deficit.

We halt all spending on Social Security tomorrow. Great, wonderful. Buuuuut... that debt still exists and nothing whatsoever changes for the budget deficit. [EDIT pedantic nuance: technically it might let us spread repaying that debt over a longer period, but the debt itself remains identical, unless we decide we're just gonna let it sit there and never pay anything against it, which is identical to nullifying it, which, see next paragraph]

Unless we're prepared to nullify debts we've already incurred, in which case, why single out the debt Social Security owns for that treatment?

> I wouldn’t be so quick to call people ill-informed on this subject if I were you.

Nah, gonna continue until I see any reason to stop.

[deltarholamda]

>why single out the debt Social Security owns for that treatment

Because it's the biggest slice of the federal budget pie, and currently it goes to the segment of the US population with the highest average net worth.

Whether you think it's right or wrong, it is a massive chunk of mandatory spending. Combined with Medicare, it's close to 40% of the entire budget, and it is ultimately unsustainable.