Where was this article last October?
You, you lousy excuse for a reporter working for a lousy excuse for a NEWSpaper HID the facts from the people who needed to be informed. We who knew it noticed your lack of information purposely done to protect a half black President because you share his Marxist views.
YOU are a contributor in the destruction of America.

Nothing will happen on this until it gets really bad or when the house, senate, and white house are all in the progressives´ hands. Then they will take over all pensions, iras, 401ks and all other retirement funds. This will solve all their problems.

If the IOU´s written when the lockbox was raided, were reimbursed to Soc. Security--doubt there would be a problem. Who took it from the "lockbox" to put funds in the General Fund?

Correct #1....You nailed it. The media are just clever crafters of lies or readers of party script all designed to deceive we the little people. They are at the center of everything that is destroying America. They selected and gave us Obama.

This is where obamacare and the death panels come in...when the IPAB starts denying care and passing out pills to the old folks, problem solved.

"will be exhausted by 2033"

What do I care? I´ll be 80. I tried to fix it in Bush´s second term. It´s the Democratic Party´s problem now, not mine.

We are just now hearing reports on the reinstatement of the 2% SS tax following the "Holiday". This was an attempt to put more money in circulation to ease the poor economy. What it did do was to reduce the employee contribution, therefore reducing the money going into the trust fund AND reducing the contribution rate used to compute future benefits. I asked a SS organization what the effect of the reduction of the tax would have on the trust fund and I was assured that the legislation included a provision to replace the lost SS $´s with general revenue $´s. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Clark Howard said yesterday that the real problem is in medical entitlements and, that with "a little tweaking", Social Security should be fine, even in the long term.

So, who do you want to believe?

Look for higher contributions, means testing, and a fixed benefit. The fixed benefit, will probably be toward the lower end of the spectrum.

Also look for higher contributions, means testing, and fixed benefits or Medicare.

Eventually inflation will reduce the value of these programs, anyway.

Benefits are automatically cut 25% when the trust fund is tapped out. They give 2033 as the year this will happen, but that assumes that the trust fund earns interest on their bonds. Since the Fed is running ZIRP, the date for the 25% benefit reduction moves up significantly, perhaps as early as 2023.

Either way, benefits will be significantly smaller than currently projected.

So, I´ve been maxing out my 401(K) and IRA contributions for years, which means a current lower standard of living, so I can enjoy my retirement and not have to worry about Alpo and Friskies for dinner, and the gov wants to 1) take away my IRA and 401(K), and 2) means test me so I don´t get any SS benefits, even though I´ve paid into the fund my whold career, and 3) I´ll never get all the money I´ve put into SS back because it will go to pay for all the people who didn´t contribute to their retirement plans because they were too busy consuming.

If you wanted to bring down this country, without the people realizing what´s happening, you´d be doing exactly what this administration is doing.

#11 - No one is going to take away your IRA. But, the Dems are going make you invest it in Govt bonds.

Clark Howard is correct. A little tweaking, raise the retirement age, means-test (it makes no sense for millionaires to get welfare), you´re done. SS isn´t the problem.

And no, you haven´t "paid in" to SS--your current taxes pay current recipients. SS is just another federal program. The "lockbox" is an accounting gimmick. Your FICA taxes are used for the wars, Solyndra, ethonol subsidies and all the other federal programs.

It is so much easier to make promises than to pay for them. Why is this so hard to understand when you get to watch zippy in action? The entire global GDP could not pay for all his spending plans. He is running out of money because he has only the formerly wealthiest nation on earth to plunder.

Any surplus SS income (above that needed to pay current recipients) is used to purchase Treasury bonds (special ones not negotiable) which puts the money into the general fund just like any purchase of Treasury bonds. No gimmics, its the law.

They used to setasside the income from the sale of Treasuries to the SS trust but that was smoke and mirrors anyway.

Redeeming the Treasuries (taking money from the lockbox) means that general funds pay SS recipients. You could burn the lockbox contents and the cash flow would be the same.

Take the taxes off SS and I´ll be happy...as will multiple millions of others getting robbed! Where is my interest on all the money paid in...nothing, only a vague promise we´d get something. The congress has stolen all of the supposed trust funds from all of us. It is time to steal it back from Congress...each and every individual that stole the money should have all their assets confiscated!

The NYTs coyly avoids medicare. No, the problems for them is social security, which would be fine, if the democrats would stop taking the money deposited and spending it on something else.

The original reason for having a tax to pay for SS was not so much the money raised but to make it more politically impossible to tamper with the plan. Everybody would take the attitude that they had paid for it so it could not be taken away. Any talk about a "lockbox" is PR lies. A private savings plan would be more beneficial to the individual over any long term investment market vs what the government gives and you could leave the remainder to your heirs. The government calls that "risky" Just another illustration that with risk goes a reward!

In lieu of social security payments offer federally owned housing culled from the toxic assets we financed.