Social Security Sellout

    There is an important article by William Greider i n the June 7 issue of Nation magazine.  Greider says that Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is just a vehicle to provide political cover for a plan to gut Social Security in exchange for conservative help in raising  taxes, which must be raised to deal with the deficit.
        But the article quotes Paul Volcker who points out that cutting Social Security benefits would not affect the deficit in the short run, and there is no funding problem in the long run.  Right now, the Social Security Trust Fund has a massive surplus--$2.5 trillion--expected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023.  This will cover all benefits till at least 2040.
    The government does not own this money and never did.  It was collected from generations of workers under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) to pay in advance for their own retirement costs.  This fund is held in the form of treasury bills,  essentially interest bearing promissory notes signed by the government. When the Social Security Trust starts spending this money, the government will have to make good on its obligations,  either by raising taxes or by printing money.  The big tax breaks for wealthy individuals and for corporations were mainly funded by dipping into this fund,  so that's whose taxes would logically be raised to put it back.  But since our government lack the guts to tax powerful interests, they will probably just print money.  Knowing this, our foreign creditors, China and Japan, mainly, are becoming nervous,  since they too hold trillions in Dollar denominated  treasury notes.  If the Dollar is radically devaluated by overprinting of money,  all of our creditors are owed less, in real terms.
   So gutting Social Security would be a way to assure our foreign creditors, without making the rich pay back the money.   And it would also make conservatives happy for another reason:  They've always hated Social Security because it works.  It's the one example of an overtly socialist program that works reliably and enjoys wide public support.  It gives the lie to their idea that government doesn't work.