Social Security Hits 60 Billion

``Social Security had its 75th birthday last year. A more important event will take place in April of 2011. That will be the first month that Social Security benefit payments hit $60 billion. Think of that. $60b a month is one hell of a lot of money. This payout (annualized) is approximately equal to the entire GDP of the Netherlands, Turkey or Indonesia. It is 50% higher than the entire economy of Switzerland... It is important to remember that every dollar of deficits at SS requires a dollar of additional debt to be held by the public. The defenders of SS keep looking at something called a Trust Fund that was supposed to “pay” for all of the SS red ink. But the defenders fail to understand that drawing down the Trust Fund just means that we go deeper in the hole on Debt Held by Public.''