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Q: What are the 'odds' that Congress will completely fail to do anything about this? [After all, they're too 'busy' trying to undo the 2016 election results and/or running as 2020 hopefuls.]
A: About the same as the MSM even talking about it.

Starting THIS YEAR Social Security expenses will be greater than revenues [think: payroll taxes, interest income, and from taxing SocSec 'benefits'].
- By 2034-35 Social Security will exhaust it's 'reserves' and officially be insolvent [for politicians read: broke].

But at least the US deficit is out of control, so Americans have that going for them.
- Americans used to save, now they just borrow and spend.

....this will not end well.

Deleted reply

Bitter Clinger wrote: Starting THIS YEAR Social Security expenses will be greater than revenues [think: payroll taxes, interest income, and from taxing SocSec 'benefits'].
- By 2034-35 Social Security will exhaust it's 'reserves' and officially be insolvent [for politicians read: broke].

The Federal budget as a whole exhausted any surplus a long time ago. Social Security having 'reserves' is irrelevant.

Suppose I have $5,000 in my checking account. Sounds good, right? Now suppose I have $5,000 in my checking account and owe $14,000 in credit card debt and $55,000 in student loans. Further suppose I spend $2700 on monthly expenses and my take home pay is $2500.

But, hey, I have money in my checking account.

I’m counting on social security to pay most,but not all, my property taxes, that is if my property taxes don’t go up too much in the next few years.

This sounds like a bad plan.

Bitter Clinger wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 8:02 am Q: What are the 'odds' that Congress will completely fail to do anything about this?

They'll do something, but they'll wait until the very last minute.

Any solution will anger some constituents, so the politicians will continue to pass it down the line until it absolutely CANNOT be avoided.

der Teufel wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 4:24 pm

Bitter Clinger wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 8:02 am Q: What are the 'odds' that Congress will completely fail to do anything about this?

They'll do something, but they'll wait until the very last minute.

Any solution will anger some constituents, so the politicians will continue to pass it down the line until it absolutely CANNOT be avoided.

....at which point they’ll jam through the worst possible solution because now it’s an emergency, and no crisis should be allowed to go to waste.

Things will get sporty way before then.

I don't worry to much about social security. Tomorrow's not promised and you can't count on or trust government. If I wasn't forced to pay in ss I wouldn't. Have you ever seen anything run by the government that was efficient?

cirus wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 6:20 pm Have you ever seen anything run by the government that was efficient?

No...but I'm sure they can handle health care and gun confiscation just fine!

Another way to think of the Social Security trust fund:

You find that when you want to take a vacation, you never have enough money, so you put $20 out of each paycheck into a cookie jar. But as you near the end of each pay period, you find yourself short. To solve that problem, you take $20 out of the jar and replace it with an IOU from yourself.

When vacation time rolls around, you empty the jar and find it contains only IOUs from yourself. At that point, your vacation fund is the same as the Social Security trust fund.

The trust fund has been spent on whatever government spends money on. It consists of special treasury bills that can't be sold. Thus, any spending from the so-called trust fund necessarily must come from current revenue. Just like you would have to fund your vacation out of your current revenue.

Just give everyone back the money they put in plus the interest it has accrued and call it done.

Wait, you mean the pyramid is going to crumble?