Former Senator from South Carolina Jim DeMint gives a speech on the Senate floor supporting a 2007 proposal to amend the budget such that Social Security surplus money collected via the payroll tax could not be used for general spending.
He goes on to propose that we deposit surplus funds into a reserve account to be saved for future beneficiaries–this would force Congress to resolve debt and budget issues without considering Social Security funds and without hiding wasteful spending behind an off-budget Trust Fund.
He says it will also put us on track to create a fully funded Trust Fund with REAL cash assets–not bonds (IOUs) that can be jeopardized by future financial or debt-ceiling crises.
Ten years later–after the Great Recession of 2008 and two such debt-ceiling crises in 2011 and 2013–this floor speech sounds pretty good to us.
