Social Security and Medicare spending [View all]

[dugog55]

I keep seeing pie charts on Federal Govt. spending. Why are Social Security and Medicare even on that chart? Everyone pays into those accounts their whole lives from their paychecks. It is a separate tax from Fed. Income tax. If they are separate accounts funded by a separate tax, why is it listed as a spending item? Not only that, some of us have to pay Income Tax on money that we had set aside to supplement our retirement years.
Al Gore was right, SS should have been put in a lock box. Everyone made fun of that statement, now look where we are. And if the SS fund is running low, either increase wages across the board so people help fund it more, or, increase the limit where SS stops being paid. Personally, I think the lack of good paying jobs is the biggest issue. That, and apparently Congress has been tossing our SS funds into the general tax fund and spending our money on stupid $35B jet fighters.