I happen to think that liberals should be open to Social Security cuts as part of a balanced package of deficit reduction.

Jonathan Chait, spewing the purest form of horseshit possible.
Social Security is not in crisis. All our problems should be like Social Security. Social Security is a rounding error in comparison to the demands of Medicare and Medicaid going forward.
Rest assured, though, The Democrat will engage this issue on the inevitable “savagely cut programs, don’t touch the tax tables or military spending” terms that the GOP demands (and will get) and will thereby set the Overton Window such that the leftmost possible position is that of merely not eliminating the social safety net completely. And wonder why all of us on drugs out here abandon them come 2012.

Lockbox!

Kevin Drum provides (perhaps) the most lucid explanation of the Social Security Trust fund I’ve ever read:

Group A overpaid and built up a pile of bonds in the trust fund. Those bonds are a promise by Group B to repay the money. That promise is going to start coming due in a few years, and it’s hardly surprising that Group B isn’t as excited about the deal now as it was in 1983.

Yep. Read the whole thing to be shocked and dismayed by who Group B represents (and is represented by)…

Lockbox!

And now, they’re coming for your Social Security money – they want your fucking retirement money – they want it back – so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later. Because they own this fucking place. It’s a Big Club: and you’re not in it.

George Carlin