- cross-posted to:
- politics
- cross-posted to:
- politics
Summary
At the first meeting of the DOGE Caucus, a new congressional group focused on government efficiency, Republican Rep. Greg Lopez stated that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are likely “on the table” as part of debt reduction efforts.
The caucus, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, aims to slash government spending, raising concerns among advocacy groups about potential attacks on anti-poverty programs.
Critics, including Social Security Works, warn the caucus may push for privatization and benefit reductions.
This comes despite Trump’s prior commitment to protect these programs.
Friendly reminder that Social Security is a separate government program that funds itself.
What Musk is talking about is stealing from Social Security in order to cut taxes elsewhere (namely cutting taxes for people like Musk).
That’s not completely true. Social Security is supposed to fund itself, however it’s currently facing a funding shortfall with current estimates that it will be depleted in 2035. There are many suggestions on how make this program solvent, including bolstering it with general funds.
I think a good start would be to stop allowing Republicans to raid Social Security for quick cash, like they’ve been constantly doing since the Reagan administration.
But then how could they argue it’s insolvent‽
That’s not completely true. Long ago they put it into the general fund. There is always a shortfall in the general fund. Before they put it in there it was solvent, and if they wouldn’t have it would be completely solvent today.
It was already stolen. They want the rest.
How does it fund itself? What’s the income? Just Social Security Tax?
Yes, it’s a payroll tax. Your paycheck may show how much you are paying into Social Security. This is money meant to help you and others after retirement. Musk wants to take that money and instead use it to fill unrelated gaps in the federal budget, gaps caused by Trump’s tax cuts for the very wealthy.
Social Security fund invested in government bonds, so the interest from that goes into the fund.
To be fair the budget deficit was there before Trump. His campaign promises are going to increase it, but they can offset that partially with spending cuts. Also, the government has been using money from the Social Security fund routinely, again nothing new under Trump. They just count it as an internal debt. According to Wikipedia, by 2022 it’s been already about 20% of the fund “borrowed” by the government.
Holy shit I never realized it until you explained it like this. Thank you, and also we are fucked.
This is one of the rare cases where I want to laugh at the silly US, but can’t because our “scial security” (we call it “retirement savings”) is being missapropriated for general funds as well :(
I just this year set up regular investment (part of my paycheck) into various funds to save for retirement privately.
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10024.pdf