Social Security
Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program passed in 1935. Social Security is a social insurance program that is primarily funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (FICA). Tax deposits are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund. According to the 2012 Annual Report of the Social Security Trustees, Social Security’s expenditures exceeded non-interest income in 2010 and 2011, the first such occurrences since 1983, and the Trustees estimate that this deficit will continue. The deficit of non-interest income relative to expenditures was about $49 billion in 2010 and $45 billion in 2011, and the Trustees project that it will average about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018 before rising steeply as the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers. After 2020, Treasury will redeem trust fund assets in amounts that exceed interest earnings until exhaustion of trust fund reserves in 2033.
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Entitlements Sinking Federal Budgets in less than 10 years

12/11/14
from NCPA,
12/11/14:

The United States spent $3.5 trillion in 2014, ran a deficit of $486 billion and has a national debt of almost $18 trillion. While the 2014 deficit was lower than in previous years, Romina Boccia, a federal budgetary affairs fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says the drop was largely due to sequestration spending cuts, the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits, an improving economy and tax increases, resulting only in a short-term improvement. By 2024, federal spending is expected to increase by 66 percent, and 85 percent of that projected spending growth is due to increases in entitlement spending.

Where exactly are federal dollars going? According to Boccia, for each dollar of federal spending in 2013: - Twenty-five percent went to Medicare, Medicaid or other health care programs. - Twenty-four percent was spent on Social Security, the single largest federal spending program. - Twenty percent was spent on "income security" benefits, such as federal retirement and disability benefits, unemployment payments and food and housing programs. - Eighteen percent went toward national defense, while the rest was spent on interest payments, transportation and K-12 education. To put government spending into perspective, Boccia describes a typical median-income household earning $52,000 in 2014. Had that family structured its finances like the federal government did this year, it would have spent $60,400 in 2014 and put an additional $8,400 on its credit card, adding to an existing credit card debt of $308,000.

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