Social Security: The elephant in the room

$2.5 Trillion of the US government's $12.5 Trillion debt is owed...to the US Government? Due to the economic downturn it looks like the bill has finally come due. According to an article run by the AP today:

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

The article continues:

For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.

These accounting tricks are finally catching up to us. Unfortunately, the outlook is not so good:

In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.

Additionally,

Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.

Social Security is essentially a giant Ponzi scheme; Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in a federal prison for doing the same thing that the United States government has been doing since 1935. Clearly this is a problem that the people of America can no longer ignore.