Reagan: "Social Security has nothing to do with the Deficit, or balancing a budget..."

[mostlyconfused]

9. That was 1984

When Reagan made that speech the annual social security taxes collected were exceeding the amount of outlays, and any excess tax collected was going into the trust fund. I take that to mean is was self contained, and not impacting the federal budget.

Today the outlays significantly exceed the tax revenues, and according to the 2011 Social Security trustees report the program was funded that year (or maybe it was 2010) from...

> "$564 billion in net contributions, $24 billion from taxation of benefits, $114 billion in interest, and $103 billion in reimbursements from the General Fund of the Treasury"

That suggests that it does impact the budget today, where it perhaps didn't in 1984. As much fun as it is to throw Reagan back into their faces, I'm not sure how relevant this clip is to today's debate.