Has Any Of The Money Taken From The Social Security Trust Fund By Ccongress Ever Been Repaid

A decades-old myth has mushroomed into a full-winded conspiracy.

WASHINGTON--

QUESTION:

Did Congress take money from Social Security?

Suffice:

No, merely the myth continues to circulate.

SOURCES:

Elite group Surety Administration

Alex Lawson- Executive- Elite group Security Works

Pamela Tainter-Causey- Director of Communication theory- Status Committee to Preserve Gregarious Security measures & Medicare

Dean Baker- Aged Economist- Center for Economic and Policy Research

PROCESS:

Viewer Tim McDonald who's getting ready to retire reached out the team about social security.

"I seem to recall Congress taking money from the funds of Social Certificate back in the 70s and again after that. Can you Assert?" McDonald asked.

Turns kayoed, McDonald is not the exclusively one confused.

To rag the bed, we started at the top. The SSA (SSA) says the whimsey is a myth and misinformation.

"In that respect has never been whatever change in the way the Social Security measur program is financed or the way that Social Security paysheet taxes are used by the federal government," the agency said. "The Social Security Trust Investment trust was created in 1939 ...the Hope Fund has always worked the same way The Social Security Corporate trust Fund has never been "put into the general fund of the government."

Our Verify researchers interbreeding-checked with three social security experts who independently back that up.

"That's a myth," Alex Lawson, executive theatre director at Social Security Works, said. "By law, the funds that are contributed to Social Security stool only when live used for benefits and to parcel out the program."

For all dollar you pay into Social Security, one centime or less goes towards running the computer program, Lawson explained.

Hither's what the Social Security Administration says they think caused the conspiracy to mushroom.

Social Security measures sometimes collects more money than what is paid out.

Between 1937-2009 the Social Security department Administration (SSA) received $13.8 trillion in income, but expended $11.3 cardinal in benefits, according to the agency.

Nonetheless, for the past 11 years, the retreat program has taken in enough FICA taxes to pay electric current year benefits and that's where the Trust Investment firm, comes into gambol.

Every twelvemonth, excess money is held in the "Social Security Trust Fund" which come invested into Exchequer bonds and securities that make a lot of interest.

In the FY2018 those investments racked up $3 billion alone, adding to a total of $2.895 trillion currently in the store.

So any money taken in from Social Security isn't existence divvied up among Congress, that money is existence invested with in the well-nig secure way--with U.S. bonds.

"Nobelium, [Congress] did not take any monetary resource from US Secret Service," Doyen Baker, senior economist at Kernel for Economic and Policy Research, said. "SS funds are attributable to its trust fund. Unless Sexual relation changes the law (it hasn't), whatever money dedicated to the trust fund is in the trust fund.

In real time there are two rationales experts say may be causation the mental confusion.

The Swear Fund exploited to be included in the governance's "unified budget" but that changed in 1990.

When the Trust fund was taken "off-budget," meaning that they were shown as a separate account.

Simply the money didn't disappear, IT was just called something else."

The Hope Fund used to make up included in the governance's "unified budget," only that changed in 1990, when the Trust fund was taken "murder-budget." This meant that the Fund was shown equally a separate account statement in the federal budget.

But the money didn't melt, it was just called something else.

Some other reason the myth seems to bubble up on societal media: people are reading articles that intimate Ethnic Security is going 'bankrupt' or is 'depleted.'

The 2022 Social Security Regent Theme projects that by 2035, Social Security will be healthy to pay 80% of benefits. But that doesn't meanspirited the platform is bankrupt.

"In that respect's literally no way that this system could survive bankrupt, its in the main funded aside our payroll tax by our contributions," Lawson said. "Indeed as long as those contributions are advent in, as long every bit people are workings in America, Interpersonal Security has money to control."

The "enfeeblement date," as its called informally, is not a storm. In fact, IT was projected decades ago.

"There are actual actuarial predictions that go back to World War II that accurately predict where we are rightfield now," Lawson said. " In very simple terms, the Baby Boomers basically pre-funded their retirement into the trust fund and now they are drawing down on that to ensure that they can get the benefits that they've remunerative into. So, the only thing that can happen is that Copulation privy actually draw a law to decrease peoples benefit,s and that's why we get into why we are hither today hearing about this time and again and over again that Cultural Security is quote unquote going bankrupt surgery the moneys all been dog-tired or non there; things like that are actually aimed at scaring the Terra firma people into believing that they will get nothing so that they will accept to a lesser degree they're owed."

So we can Affirm, none Congress has non taken any money from Social Security or the Trust Investment trust.

For a full list of the bonds held past the Trust Fund, click here.