Will Social Security Disability Benefits Be Restricted?

The social security program is often described as an inefficient entitlement program. Nothing is further from the truth. The problem is Congress has used the surpluses the program had for decades to pay interest on the national debt. Now that there are no surpluses and the program runs at a deficit, one has to ask whether social security disability benefits are going to be impacted?

Social Security is considered a third rail topic. What does this mean? Well, it is a topic that politicians don't want to talk about much less deal with because they chance facing a voter revolt. The problem is the program is running out of money because retiring baby boomers are putting stress on it by requiring more money to be paid out than is brought in. This means either taxes have to be raised to pay for the benefits or those benefits need to be cut back. Either choice is not going to be popular with voters, but they are really going to be angry when they find out how we got into this position.

Listen to politicians and they will tell you social security is in trouble because it is inefficient and facing the demographic baby boomer problem. Both reasons are false and you shouldn't believe a word of it. The problem with social security is the government has been gutting it for years to pay for other things, specifically the interest on our national debt. This is because the total social security taxes collected each year for decades was far more than what was paid out. In 1999, for instance, the surplus was roughly $105 billion. This was for one year and reflected surpluses that existed for generations. All that money has been swiped by the government to pay our debts. The program is running out of money all right - because the government spent it!

So, what is the surplus for 2010? Here's where the problems start. The bad economy and influx of baby boomers means there will be...no surplus in 2010. Payments coming into the program will about equal payments going out. This should also be the case in 2011 and 2012. Assuming the Mayans are wrong and we make it to 2013, things start to get ugly. The program will start running big deficits. It will have roughly a couple of trillion dollars in it, but that pool should be used up in five to ten years.

All of this means bad news for social security and disability payments under the program. The government is going to have to raise taxes just to pay for the national debt and Medicare. There general belief is social security will exist in the future, but it will be cut way back as far as benefits go. If you are relying on it, you need to seriously contemplate another strategy as that check you get is going to be getting much smaller in the coming years if not disappearing entirely.

Mark P. Warner is with CurrentUSANationalDebt.com - learn the current USA national debt amount and read up on other national debt issues.