The Social Security Trust Fund is U.S. Government Sovereign Debt

Today's Washington Post (21 Dec 10 pg. A14) published an irresponsible misrepresentation of social Security funding by Allan Sloan which undermines the system's integrity and gravely disadvantages workers.

Sloan contends that the Social Security trust fund, currently valued at $2.6 trillion, is "a snare and a delusion for people who think that it makes Social Security financially sound. " Sloan falsely claims that "This year (2010) ... Social security (is) collecting less cash than it pays out." Sloan masks this dishonesty by assuming that the Social Security trust fund does not collect interest on the U.S. bonds it holds. In fact, it does, and that interest puts Social Security comfortably in the black for 2010 and for the foreseeable future.

Sloan also supports his falsehoods by claiming that the Social Security trust fund " ... is merely an accounting fiction that has no economic value when it comes to protecting Social Security beneficiaries." Sloan is contending that U.S. laws passed in 1985 which taxed workers to pay all Social Security benefits since that date plus taxes to build up a surplus that will soon reach $3 trillion to pay their future benefits "has no real funds" and only an "economically useless" .... "moral" claim on the U.S. government.

Sloan and all the other foes of Social Security should stand reminded that the trust fund is the sovereign debt of the United States government and has at least the same value as such debt held by the governments of China, Japan, Great Britain and other investors at home and around the world.

To state, as Sloan does in the Washington Post today, that the Social Security trust fund is worthless, is to endanger far more than the hard-earned benefits of American workers, it is to cast into doubt the very survival of our country as a capitalist constitutional democracy.