Posted originally on Jun 30, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

How many times have politicians stood before the American people claiming Social Security is “running out of money?” That is the biggest fraud of all. I have said for decades that Social Security is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Your payroll taxes are not sitting safely in an account waiting for retirement. They were spent by Washington years ago. The so-called Social Security Trust Fund is filled with government IOUs, not real assets. Every administration kicked the can down the road while pretending there was a trust fund. There never was. They borrowed every dime and spent it on everything except what workers were promised.

Now look at what has surfaced inside Obamacare. According to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., more than one million Obamacare enrollments lacked Social Security numbers. Kennedy stated, “The Obamacare marketplace is plagued by fraud in large part because the Biden administration dismantled basic program integrity guardrails.” He then asked the question every taxpayer should be screaming at Congress: “Why are we paying people we don’t know if they actually exist?” The administration says it has already removed roughly 2.8 million improper enrollments after reviewing eligibility and broker activity, yet they estimate over one million broker-assisted enrollments were submitted without Social Security numbers. That should terrify every American who pays taxes.

Dr. Mehmet Oz exposed another layer of the scandal. “Some of these agents refuse to follow basic rules like providing their clients’ Social Security number. That, my friends, is a huge red flag.” CMS officials say certain brokers enrolled people without their knowledge simply to collect commissions from taxpayers. Once again, Washington’s answer is never accountability. Billions disappear, fraud flourishes, nobody goes to prison, and then politicians return to the microphone demanding more money from the productive class.

Meanwhile, they continue claiming Social Security is going broke because Americans are living too long. Give me a break. In 2025 alone, Social Security paid roughly $1.6 trillion in benefits to more than 73 million Americans. Workers continue paying 12.4% of wages into the system through payroll taxes, yet every surplus collected for decades was loaned directly to the federal government and spent. Today, the Trust Fund holds Treasury securities, promises from a government already drowning in over $40 trillion of federal debt. They stole from one pocket, stuffed an IOU into the other, and now expect everyone to pretend the money is still there.

This is what governments do when they reach the end of the sovereign debt cycle. They waste trillions overseas, finance endless wars, expand every bureaucracy imaginable, tolerate massive fraud, and then have the audacity to tell retirees they must sacrifice because “the system isn’t sustainable.” No, Washington isn’t sustainable. Social Security did not fail because retirees collected too much. It failed because politicians treated workers’ retirement savings as their personal checking account.

Do not expect this to improve. Governments never admit failure. They always look for someone else to blame. First, it was the rich. Then it was retirees. Tomorrow, it will be anyone with savings left. As confidence in sovereign debt continues to erode into the next phase of this crisis, every entitlement program becomes another political weapon. The real crisis has never been Social Security. The real crisis is a government addicted to debt that has spent future generations into oblivion while pretending every promise can somehow be honored.