Prior to about ’80 Treasury bonds were acknowledged as “inflation control” because they reduced the total money supply. Bond proceeds are applied to the debt, meaning they are canceled and no longer available to spend. Money can’t be doubled to reduce debt and be used as revenue, and that is not supported in any accounting by Treasury or the Fed. The false concept of taxation and bonds being revenue for spending is a fairly recent thing.

When SS taxes are collected they are used to purchase bonds, which is simply an asset swap. We had money then we traded it for bonds which are promissory notes that earn interest. Their original purpose was to defend the gold reserve. However, the government couldn’t hold both the gold and currency that was convertible to gold and count both as assets. Ditto with taxes. All money is canceled when it enters the government sector because we never changed the system from its gold standard purpose.

A statement of the SS trust fund shows the value of the bonds it contains, but those are not high power money that the government uses for spending. When the bonds mature new dollars must be created to replace them before they can be used to make benefit payments. That spending is exactly the same as it would be without the bonds, so the bonds never “fund” anything. FICA does nothing except reduce the buying power of the workers and it makes no difference if the “fund” goes broke or doesn’t beyond a meaningless accounting function.

Here’s Bernanke explaining how the government spends. He is referring to the bailout, but all spending is accomplished the same way.

Here’s Greenspan schooling Paul Ryan on Social Security. He’s simply saying that any level of benefit payments can be made as long as there are goods and services available for the benefits to purchase. He understands that the government never has, or doesn’t have, money as the monopoly issuer and doesn’t need money to spend. The existence of the bonds has no bearing on our ability to provide benefits. This is well verified by many economists with Dr. in front of their names after they deep dived into the mechanics of our monetary system.