"Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government."

"According to most projections, the Social Security trust fund will begin drawing on its Treasury Notes toward the end of the next decade (around 2018 or 2019), at which time the repayment of these notes will have to be financed from the general fund."

But also, your references to 'the truth' unintentionally gives you the air of a conspiracy theorist.

Incidentally, it's noting that the solvency projections are not inevitable but are based on the assumption of steady demographic change. It will be interesting to review these when the 2010 Census data becomes available in December or early 2011.

The "social security money is being taken by the gov't" meme is just so silly - what should they do, put the money in cash in a big vault somewhere?

Your comment on Social Security accounting (which is correct, as far as I know), has no bearing on the parent's observation that FICA tax doesn't scale linearly - because it is capped at a certain point.