Reply #30: Yes, in a sense Social Security recipients are creditors of the government...

[PoliticAverse]

the difference is that the government has the ability to control how much those
creditors are paid without defaulting.

Since no one is contractually guaranteed to receive any specific amount of
Social Security benefits (affirmed by the Supreme Court in Fleming v. Nestor:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html ) Congress can reduce Social Security
benefits, change COLA formulas, raise the retirement age etc. without technically
'defaulting'. It could for example eliminate Social Security entirely and never
have to redeem the securities in the trust fund.

Because the amount of revenue Social Security gets is not directly related to the amount
of Social Security payments and any amount in excess of payments is used to 'purchase'
special issue securities and flows back to the government any decrease in payments by
Social Security gives the government more cash and has the effect of reducing the
deficit.

Note that the $2.6 Trillion in the trust fund that has built up since the 1983 Social
Security reform has been reducing the effective deficits of the federal government in
the years since 1983.

So the answer to the question of why are they trying to take money from Social Security
recipients is:
1 - Because they can, because Social Security Payments aren't legally binding contracts.
2 - Because any amount of reduced payments causes the government to have to borrow less and
makes the deficit look better.

Ultimately Social Security is a political issue. How much are you willing to tax people
and how much are you willing to pay people.