“Money paid into SS doesn’t go into a slush fund…the Social Security Administration is required by law to invest SS funds in US treasury bonds. The money from the sale of bonds goes into the Treasury and can be spent. For example, on invading a foreign country and waging war without raising taxes to pay for it.”
Sounds pretty slushy to me, which I guess was your point. However I’m just another of the “slightly informed”. 
@thumper1 : I’m pretty sure you have to be FRA to file & suspend.
We’re not happy about this. My husband is 62 and I’m 61 and he retired early to avoid a layoff - his two options. We had it figured out that we could afford it partially planning to use this… It may be called a loophole, but it has been the law for 15 years and millions of people have used it and will continue to use it (if they are able to claim it within the next six months). The way it was changed was in the middle of the night with zero mention in the press except for about one article by a financial reporter. NONE of the mainstream talking points about the budget deal mentioned it. This was negotiated over a few days as part of this emergency deal. So it’s a major change in Social Security benefits that will impact people near retirement who don’t have the time to make up for it my making different choices. They say it might cost people 50K, unless they have to then take social security earlier and give up years of higher benefits … then the economic consequence could be much higher. For us about $7000 per year as long as my husband lives over age 70, plus whatever we don’t collect between age 66 and 70 – so it’s a large amount of income and not easy to make up for. Yes, we’ll move on and deal with it… but it was a kind of crazy to make such a drastic benefit change so quietly.
AGREE
The lack of notice is simply unethical in my humble opinion.
I have a sliver of hope that some revisions–such as lead time–could still happen.
Whether is should have ever existed or should exist–it did and was legal and available. To suddenly change it with no lead time is unsupportable.
Looks like I get messed over with the change to the “restricted application” rule. I was born in 1954…winter birthday, so I’m just a few weeks past the cutoff. I had always thought that I would be able to file at age 66 for half of my ex-husbands benefit… but no more.
so wait- my DH and I are now both 63 1/2 [ both born in 1952] .
We will still be able to get some sort of modified file and suspend benefit?
How?
I have genuine sympathy for those approaching retirement age who were planning to use the file-and-suspend strategy and now have had the rug pulled out from under them without warning.
On the other hand, file-and-suspend does sound like a “double-dipping” strategy, created as an unintended consequence of changes that were made by legislation enacted in 2000—a classic “loophole.” It was primarily used by, and useful to, relatively affluent 2-income couples, and even within that cohort it was used mainly by relatively small numbers of the well-advised and financially savvy. That’s no way to run a public pension system, and I can’t believe anyone in their right mind intended to create this “benefit” which allows a select few to harvest a windfall unavailable to most, to the detriment of the common pool of resources that all depend on. So I think it’s the right public policy outcome, though I agree there’s something lacking in the process. Like fair warning.
Not that it affects me personally. File-and-suspend wouldn’t have worked for DW and me, but then it wouldn’t do anything for many, probably most couples, so there’s that. We’ve been paying the max into Social Security for years and we may never get back as much in benefits as we’ve paid in taxes, but that doesn’t bother me. I always figured my Social Security taxes were going to support my parents and grandparents and others of their generations who needed it and in some sense deserved it more than I did, because without Social Security their retirement years would have been lived in abject poverty, while for me it meant just a little less disposable income in my income-earning years. My Social Security benefits will be paid for, not by me, but by my children and (should I live so long) my grandchildren. That’s the nature of a “pay as you go” system. I’m counting on Social Security as part of my retirement strategy, but I don’t want to saddle my children and grandchildren with unreasonable levels of taxation to support me in my dotage. Nor do I want to finagle the system to try to grab more than my fair share of the benefits because that just means less is available for others, and/or my children and grandchildren and other of their generations will just need to pay more.
There you go again, bclintonk, thinking of how others are affected.
Madoff does it, it’s called a Ponzi scheme. The government does it, it’s social security.
The alarm over social security is pretty much a bunch of hoopla that amounts to politicians effectively kicking the can down the road every time it comes up. There are, for sure, hard decisions to be made about retirement ages and what not, but it’s not a topic any candidate for office is going to seriously suggest given the voting bloc senior citizens make up. We’re more likely to see ever diminishing cost of living adjustments, higher retirement ages, or optional higher retirement ages with better payouts. The (sad?) fact is that social security is an economic requirement, a safety net, much like welfare that will be around in some form or another for the foreseeable future. The first politician to make it a platform issue will be guaranteed to run against attack ads of grandma eating dog food.
Personally, I would not count on it as a sole source of retirement income. I wish I could stare into a crystal ball and see where legislation is going to end up, but as the population of the US gets older and there are less payers into the system than payees, the outcome is pretty clear.
If only more people understood the power of compound interest, I think more people in their 20s would have fully funded 401ks, but I’m an optimistic economist. 
What’s FRA?
Full Retirement Age.
Why did they attach this to the budget deal, since social security doesnt come out of the budget?
My understanding of the change is that it only affects those born in 1954 and later. If you turn 62 by the end of this year, then you can still use file and suspend when you reach FRA. Of course, DH was born in 1954.
But I could be reading it wrong, so who knows.
So I am older than DH. I am already 62 but he is a few years behind me. How would this work?
I totally agree. If you can suspend, …
Yes, I just checked…and you have to be 66 to file and suspend. I know a family that has been counting on this (loophole)…very high earners. The mom would have been very eligible for benefits since she was still caring for minor children…four of them. And the kids would have been too. But I know this dad isn’t even close to 66.
But their annual income is well in excess of $200,000 a year!
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=176706&sid=7a069f42614b293d6512b2f8c54769e3
Here’s a good Bogleheads thread that explains the changes and gives some good examples.
I am glad Congress is finally doing something constructive.
Here is how my planning has evolved. First thought was wait unitl age 70 to collect max check. Then I learned about “file and suspend”, so planned to do that. Now with file and suspend not available (but we are age 62 so still able to avoid “deeming”) we will have to consider wife filing at age 66 and me taking a spousal benefit, then switching to my own at age 70. That would actually give us twice as much money from age 66-70 as the file and suspend, but slightly lower check for my wife from age 70 on. We will wait for the calculators to be updated, and of course still have 3+ years to decide. Under either scenario if we die before age 66 we will have collected zero from social security, but once I am dead I won’t care any more.
@NJres . You are both over 62. Nothing changes for you. You can proceed with file and suspend plans.