Factcheck.org Misleads to Accuse Sanders of Misleading

And the establishment attacks keep on coming!

Sen. Bernie Sanders repeats a Democratic talking point in saying that Social Security hasn’t contributed “one penny” — or “one nickel” — to the deficit. In fact, it contributed $73 billion to the deficit in 2014.

That depends on whether you think Social Security is government program funded on a year to year basis or a program we all pay into in order to receive payments later.

Sanders is talking about what’s called the “on-budget” deficit, while Social Security is considered an “off-budget” program. But in terms of actual federal revenue and outlays, and borrowing, Social Security is contributing to yearly deficits and has been since 2010. Sanders himself has considered Social Security to be a part of the overall budget: On his Senate website, he includes raising the income cap on Social Security taxes as one way to “reduce the deficit.”

“Social Security adds to the unified deficit, which is the deficit we almost all discuss all the time,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told us in an email interview. “It does so because we spend a lot more on Social Security benefits than we raise in payroll tax and other related revenue.”

Goldwein told us that Sanders’ statement contains a kernel of truth in that Social Security technically can’t run a debt. “That means that any [yearly] deficits it’s running now can only legally be paid because it was running surpluses in the past,” he says. But the government spent the surplus on other things. It owes Social Security the money, which is held in the form of Treasury securities. In order to pay it, the government must cut spending in other areas, raise taxes or borrow from the public.

If you consider Social Security just another on budget government program where you tax some people each year to pay out other people the same year, what then is the rationale for regressive FICA taxation? Just to make sure the rich pay a much lower percentage of their income for Social Security than the rest of us do?