Are you retired and receiving Social Security benefits? What would happen if Congress stopped borrowing money from Social Security?

Well ..
1. This has been the scare since the mid-80s.
2. Social Security is part of the 2/3s of the federal expenditures that are automatically renewed. When they talk about 'the budget' needs to be voting on they are talking those items that are renewable on an annual based.
3. Only the annual renewable items are up for discussion. Defense is one of those things and takes HALF the voted budget. Congressional, presidential, emergency funding for the next year are reviewed and voted upon at these budget hearings.
4. Automatic renewable programs like Welfare generally have a life between 5 to 10 years. These programs can make or break the Party that touches them prior to an election AND they by law MUST be addressed or the program ENDS. One of the common tactics for a party that will not 'inherent' the Programs next end-date (tactic to be implemented the year prior for programs such as Welfare or Social Security renewal) is to bring the Bill governing the issues 'up to Congress', prior to the election to undermine any attempts to 'fix' the problem permanently - thus throwing the bad karma on the majority party in hopes of gaining congressional seats and offices.
5. There is a technique that could be used to end an automatic renewable program. It is for the party that will remain in the majority for greater than 2 years to non-renew the Program. The ideal would for that party's to have a fixed (after elections) majority in the Senate (6 yr) and Representatives (2 yr) along with a President who just won a 2nd term re-election to simply vote against renewal. At the end of the fiscal year the Program would cease operations. It could be 'extended' for say - 6 months - but not to pay the monies to 'people' but only to shut down, redistribute facilities, transfer personnel, give out the pink-slips (most gone in two weeks) and secure to store documents, destroy in-house personal information or erasure/storage of computer hard drives/servers.
6. Social Security isn't a government program (since 1992, see #10 & 11 below) except in administration. You could argue that his Presidential Order directing that Social Security 'LOAN' money to the US Government was unconstitutional BUT the majority Democrat Congress and the Democrat President combination made that moot. After Johnson's presidency, there was the Nixon Watergate Scandal (which was ethically but not Hillary-ish dossier wrong) that effectively stopped the Republican efforts.
7. The only reason Social Security comes up for a vote is so the 'LOAN' can be extended and the US Government doesn't have to pay back the $2,700,000,000.00 ($2.7 Trillion) that it has 'borrowed' from the US Citizen's retirement fund.
8. My opinion the whole operation is kinda like loaning your wife money - you're never going to see it again and the only way to stop the 'loans' is D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
9. By-the-by, the Social Security Administration gives the government an excellent interest rate (for the government - not for Social Security) of 2.875% monthly as of June 2018. That rate varies monthly (not sure how determined or based on) and has been paid since President Johnson penned it into policy. In the year 2000 the interest rate was 6.625% and has declined annually since.
10. Although the transactions of the Social Security program itself are officially "off-budget," the administrative budget for the agency running the program (the Social Security Administration) is not. SSA's annual administrative budget is subject to the standard budget and appropriations process.
11. Thus each year the agency must present a separate budget request for its administrative costs (called the Limitation on Administrative Expenditures, or LAE line-item) and this request is subject to all the standard review procedures of the Office of Management and Budget and the budget and appropriations committees of the Congress.
12. The Social Security Administration chronically fails their Government Accounting Office audits, This is another reason why "Social Security" is revisited often as the Social Security Administration (an organization that manages Trillions of dollars) can't budget itself.
13. Prior to President Johnson's penmanship, Social Security was solvent with assets greatly in excess of liabilities. That's what made it a big fat target.
14. I do not expect our government to ever pay the Social Security back. The majority of those that paid into the borrowed monies are deceased. It would do them no good. The simple children in Congress at Washington saw their sibling's piggy bank and have been steady shaking coin out of it since the late 60s.
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All that being said - as a citizen - I would be happy to forgive the debt completely (since I know they cannot) if they would just stop taking the money. Currently Social Security is treated by the government as a 'revolving account'.
I know they can never pay it back, because right now the government only pays the interest of the borrowed money, not against the principal - which would reduce the debt.
If the government stopped the loan process with Social Security (citizens forgive the loan and begin it at zero) the government would only have to vote on a annual one-time core amount of monies to covering the next 5 years of projected liabilities. The interest paid is what actually covers the end-year liabilities after the reduced Social Security payments are paid out to citizens. After that - Social Security's total liabilities amount would be less than the currently projected interest against the $2.7 Trillion for the same length of time.
Hope this helped.

SCPO Donnie B. Now I draw AF retirement and SS both. SS help a great deal if you work in a civilian job and make good money. Build up those credits. Civil service doesn't pay into SS or that's what my CS son tells me. He was a Navy man for 20 years and got out and works depot level on F15's. And my company throws in some every month and added a lot of matching funds.

SFC Andrew Miller -
SCPO (Join to see) -
From the Social Security Administration's government web page.
"The Trust Fund represents a legal obligation of the federal government to program beneficiaries. The government has borrowed nearly $2.8 trillion as of 2014 from the Trust Fund and used the money for other purposes."