PRES. RONALD REAGAN: Social Security, let’s lay it to rest once and for all. I told you, never would I do such a thing, but I tell you also now. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security trust fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or erasing or lowering the deficit.

Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again. But that was okay, Dick Cheney said in 2002, because Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.