Comment Re:Congress Makes Cuts (Score 1) 253
The problem is that structurally Social Security and Medicare have problems. Depending on what side of the aisle you are on it is either they have been too generous with benefits or haven't been funded like they needed to be. Either way it is going to be a political mess when the trust fund runs out, but even before that things are going to get painful for the government.
In years when Social Security was running surpluses that extra money went to purchase the bonds for the trust fund so that money went into the general fund to pay for other stuff. Since the trust fund is really just government bonds that will get redeemed from the general fund you are going to see either increased taxation, decreased spending on other programs, or more likely higher deficit spending. When that is gone then the hard decision comes as Social security will only be able to pay out ~75% of the benefits it had been paying out. The government doesn't have a choice in this because the constitution states, in not so few words, that the debts will be paid. At this point the US federal government will either have to directly fund the difference out of the general fund (basically it will be the same amount that was spend on the previous month paying off the last batch of redeemed bonds), or tell the peasants to piss off and accept that they can't pay benefits in full.