Social Security is elephant in the room in Washington. Everyone knows that it's an extremely expensive program, entirely unsustainable, but it's too popular so they don't address the issue.
For 2012, Social Security is expected to cost us $761 billion. That's over 20% of our entire federal budget.
According to most projections, Socials Security will run out of funds in 2017 because there are less workers replenishing the fund than there are retirees pulling from it. In other words, the money that we have been pouring into this program to help provide a nice retirement for ourselves will not be there when we retire.
This puts a burden on the federal government to cover the difference. But we all know the US government is current operating on a deficit, meaning we're spending more each year than we earn. And the national dept is growing way too fast (as of this writing, over $14 trillion) to reasonably expect them to just pay the difference.
So, the question here is 1) How can we make sure Social Security is fully funded for perpetuity and 2) How can we do it without crippling the Federal Treasury any more than it already is?
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