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A good explanation of why natedogg's so wrong about the government "lending to itself". Its done all the time at the personal level.

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The problem with it is that the ssi tax has a cap of 97.5k and it use to be less. Couple that with the fact that there have been years where the ss tax paid for 1/2 the deficit and you can see how the middle class bore the bulk of the general budget's deficit.

In fact, Clinton claimed to have balanced the budget one year, when it fact, it took about 300b of ssi taxes to make up the deficit spending from the general budget.

Now 1/2 of that 300b was paid by individuals and the other 1/2 by the employer.

Those who made less than 97.5k were taxed on 100% of their money for ss and had the excess given to the general fund in exchange for IOUs which cannot be repaid without raising taxes, or cutting spending dramatically.

A football player, making 2m a year, paid ss taxes on 5% of his income, and therefore paid a lot loss (as a percentage of his gross income) than a college grad working in the computer field, pulling in 97.5k a year.

In addition, taxes on gasoline are by law, to be used only for infrastructure. It is a regressive tax and it is also running a surplus that congress has to maintain the "books" for and "pay back."

Just another way to tax the middle class for the purpose of paying the deficit.

That's the problem.

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Which "that" are you referring to - that the SS accumulated taxes are allowed to pay for programs other than SS, or that the cap is $98K?