Spending Social Security’s surplus

In his letter to PAW (Feb. 8) on “The reality of Social Security,” Stewart G. Hibben '48 writes the words and misses their meaning. He writes: “Over its history, the Social Security Administration has taken in more in payroll deductions than it has paid out in retirement benefits. That surplus gap is now closing.” So where are the 75 years of surplus that should be available to cover some large number of future years? Congress has taken it to spend on nonsense, and put in an IOU instead. You know who pays when the IOU comes due.  

So Social Security really is an unfunded-entitlement-by-design through all those years of theft and mismanagement by Congress.