New Legislative Body - Super Congress

[Viper1]

Rath said:

osamanobama said:

the bolded is a complete lie. aside form the fact that after we pay the interest on the debt, pay our soldier pay medicare recipients, we would still have enough to write the Social Security checks. SS payments are completely seperate from our debt and what revenue we have to pay it with. its filed completely diffferent, they have no correlation on each other, and besides, we are supposed to have a social security trust fund. or thats what politicians have been telling us since SS inception... *wink wink nudge nudge*

I'm no expert on the matter but my understanding is that social security in the US is self funding in that the revenues exceed the outlays, nevertheless those revenues form a part of the net revenues of the US government and in the absence of being able to raise the debt ceiling social security payments may not be of high enough priority - the revenue might be routed elsewhere. I don't know what the priority of payments is (apart from interest being top priority to avoid default) but there is a real chance social security isn't up there - there are millions of people employed by the federal government afterall.

Revenues now no longer exceed outlays.  That's why it is now stated taht the entitlement programs are insolvent.  However, there is still enough to fund them for several more years before the tap actually runs dry.

As for whether they will get paid if the debt ceiling is not increased, I've already stated several tims in this thread that they will be paid.  Anything already appropriated in the budget is going to get paid.   All the debt ceiling increase would pay for are spending that has been approved but not appropriated yet.