The argument that "we can't afford the taxes to buy back the bonds" would be funny if it did not carry a promise that they'd like to cut our throats. We Boomers have worked twice as hard for falling compensation while building up the $2.8 trillion S.S. surplus from 12% of our earnings - to pay for ourselves now. Half of us have already reached retirement age.
So, we paid up front for guaranteed S.S. INSURANCE benefits.
They dared to default on US government debt, but were soon enlightened about something called interest rates and can now see the result of that kind of tinkering played out in Greece, which the IMF, international reserve banks and many other investors are happy to take advantage of for a long time to come.
S.S. has been a fundamental part of the foundation upon which the U.S. economy and revenue has stood for decades, and I can not imagine its elimination as being any less catastrophic to our nation than the failure of a few dastardly bankers.
The U.S. is holding a $2.8 trillion debt owed to the millions of citizens it has legally, forcefully insured against loss of income in old age/disability, and it frantically rushed to the rescue of criminal bankers BY PRINTING MONEY. Several trillion more than they owe US citizens, and seemingly as insult in addition to that injury, continue to pour billions more per month into banks as collateral/insurance against their future misdeeds. "Q.E."
I'm here to say that the Q.E. spending in the US of $800 billion since 2007 has been wrongheaded. It was entirely given to banks. We all know who needed shoring up after the TARP funds were repaid nearly in full within a year, and it was emphatically not bankers! The victims of bankers would have done far more good with much less of that money in very short order!!! AND, don't you know almost all of that money would have gone straight from bank victims back into banks anyway! Is it really so repulsive to bankers; accepting deposits from customers?!!
If they can print up mountains of cash and gift it to wealthy people who have no, zero, nada, contracts that require these gifts from the U.S., (therefore zero default potential from not giving it all away to them), surely they can print up far less for those who prepaid and have contractual claims that have a very real default potential 30 years from now, and at an extremely gradual rate!