The Social Security Trustees have just issued their annual report, which states that the program is sound until the year 2037. 

But the report assumes that the Trust Fund contains real assets, which the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Associated Press (AP) all reject. 

An AP article indicates that the amount of money raised from the payroll tax will NOT be enough to pay full Social Security benefits starting in 2016.

After 2016, the Social Security Trust Fund will have to rely on the non-negotiable IOUs to pay benefits.  These IOUs are given to the Trust Fund in return for using Social Security surpluses to fund the general operations of the federal government. 

The AP states about the Trust Fund: "That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government."

But the IOUs are not genuine assets.  They are just promises to pay back out of the Treasury the money that was raised for Social Security but spent on other purposes.  No one knows where the money will come from to redeem these IOUs.

The Trustees estimate that the "assets" in the Social Security Trust Fund in 2016, in current dollars using low cost assumptions, will be $4.018.4 trillion.  But these "assets" are entirely illusionary.  Since the money must come from the U.S. Treasury, it is exactly as if the Trust Fund did not exist at all.

Accordingly, the year trust funds are "exhausted," 2037, is completely meaningless. 

If the Congress has the means and the will to continue to appropriate hundreds of billions every year from 2017 to 2037 for Social Security, then it could also continue to do so after 2037. 

The existence of the Trust Funds does not affect the ability of the government to fund Social Security positively or negatively.

Unless the raid of the Social Security Trust Fund is halted and the money paid back that has already been borrowed, then it is highly doubtful Social Security can continue much beyond 2016 in its present form.

The budget of the U.S. government, published by OMB, has contained the same identical statement each year during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations:

"These balances are available for future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures, but only in a bookkeeping sense. The holdings of the trust funds are not assets of the Government as a whole that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury.The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, increase the Government's ability to pay benefits."

Likewise CBO, in a report, "The Outlook for Social Security," says, "Those trust funds are mainly accounting mechanisms and contain no economic resources."

Two bills have been introduced that would require Social Security surpluses to be saved, not spent:

The Social Security Preservation Act, HR 219, introduced by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), would require the Trust Fund to contain real assets, such as certificates of deposit in FDIC-insured institutions.

The Savings for Seniors Act, HR 1712, introduced by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), would require Social Security surpluses to be saved in a special account and not spent on the general operations of the federal government.