That last part is BS. ALL of the SS "surplus" was put in the only place it could be legally, special non-marketable bonds. Every penny that was put in those bonds is still there. There was NEVER any mechanism put in place to pay those bonds back. If there had been, I might agree that the government "spent it". But since there wasn't we are in exactly the same place with SS that we would be in any other circumstance. Actually worse since it effectively hid a very high percentage of the deficit over the years. Even during the Clinton "surplus", if you backed out the SS money (only in Washington can you take a long term liability-- the SS bonds-- and count them as a short term asset-- the SS surplus) we haven't had a single year of non-deficit spending since Nixon.