A small group of people considers itself superior to the rest of the population. As a group it is convinced it deserves every break, benefit, privilege, and handout, while the second group is only worthy of intrusive oversight, abuse, exploitation, and punishment.
This isn't hyperbole. This is the political belief system that drives the rhetoric about the government spending and debt.
The proof is simple - government debt always increases when the first group is in power.
Always.
This wouldn't happen if it was really about the deficit.
Yes this is it and this is all it ever was. The second the pen was put to paper and SS was made law it has been under attack. People have been proclaiming it'll go insolvent any day now for almost a century.
It's an ideological attack and we shouldn't even humor these people. The idea of essentially retirement insurance feels unfair to a ton of people and that's that.
So you're right that it's not the same as publicly held debt. Rather intragovernmental debt is deferring the decision of how to pay for some governmental services to a later time, although usually it becomes publicly held debt. One way or another, the tax payer is on the hook for this spending which is part of the gross national debt, just like they're on the hook for publicly held debt.
The Social Security surplus is pretty much required to purchase US bonds and other guaranteed Federal securities.
But saying that "contributes to the Federal debt" is like saying your 401k contributes to corporate debt.
I am still not convinced that Social Security causes Federal debt the way that a trillion-dollar military budget does.