Don’t you have to wonder…are social media posts like the one below (and there are plenty of them) a display of pure ignorance, malicious for a purpose or warped politics?
I find it very sad, including the people who ❤️ it and pass it around.
Americans need to stop forming opinions and supporting policies based on lies, misinformation and plain nonsense.
“I Googled it.” Really? If you Googled it you either can’t read or can’t comprehend what you do read.
This is a long-running myth. Democrats (or anyone else) did not move Social Security into the general fund in the sense of abolishing or raiding its dedicated Trust Fund.
The Social Security Administration has addressed this directly: There has never been any change in how the program is financed or how payroll taxes are used. The Trust Fund (created in the 1939 amendments) has always operated the same way and has never been put into the general fund of the government.
What actually happened
• Surplus Social Security payroll tax revenues have always been invested in special-issue U.S. Treasury securities (required by law). The cash goes to the Treasury (and can be used for other government spending) in exchange for interest-bearing IOUs held by the Trust Fund. When benefits need to be paid, the securities are redeemed. This mechanism dates to the program’s early years and is not a partisan “move.”
• In 1968–1969, under President Lyndon Johnson, Social Security transactions were included in the “unified budget” for federal accounting/presentation purposes. This was a bookkeeping change so that all government activities appeared in one budget picture. It had no effect on the actual operations, legal status, or assets of the Trust Fund itself.
• Social Security was later taken off-budget again (fully by 1990). Whether it is shown “on-budget” or “off-budget” is primarily an accounting presentation issue.
