I thought you guys might like to read this.
hands-off-that-lock-box: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
hands-off-that-lock-box: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
Since Congress can change the law any time it wants to, saying that some future change would be "against the law" is kind of meaningless.
We know that the SS tax hikes in the 1980s resulted in SS taxes exceeding benefits. We know that this excess would accumulate to more than $2 trillion today if we accumulate the numbers at the federal borrowing rate. We also know that money was spent, and/or used to fund FIT cuts, and/or used to reduce borrowing from the public. There is no "lock box" as most of us would use that term.
Did government act responsibly? My take on it is that they did not.
Feds are a bit different, in the early 80s went to a 401k type retirement W/SS Vs defined benefit. Probably was a good idea in the long run. I wonder why state & local govts didn't do the same, would probably not have cost any more at the time.Here in Illinois, the general consensus is that the gov't has never acted responsibly. If you're on the right team, Da Machine Team, you like that. If not, you hate it. But regardless of how you feel, those gov't folks are always irresponsible if not criminal. Why should the feds be different?