Quote:
Originally Posted by Cletus Miller
(ie, swapped for public debt)
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If this is what happens, you're right. But that's not what happens to those bonds if we are paying for SS out of current revenue (again, assuming a balanced budget that includes SS, which is the fantasy world I'm working in).
Maybe I'm missing something, and I don't really have a sense of the relative size of the flows and the mechanics of how they work, but bonds from the trust fund only get paid off as surplus turns to deficit, right? So if there's no more deficit (i.e. current revenues are sufficient), there are no bonds to pay off aside from rolling over, or better yet legislating them away).
Also, based only on the numbers you cited, I thought the trust fund bonds were included for purposes of the debt ceiling (currently around $14 trillion and roughly the sum of the two numbers you gave).
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