Democrats have been insisting for decades that there’s really a Social Security trust fund, which provides the funding for Social Security payments. It’s supposed to be an insurance plan, remember. We paid into the program, the money was put aside, and then the money is paid out.

Except no trust fund exists. The money went to funding the day-to-day operations of the federal government. There is no lockbox. Payments come from the general expenditures of the government. In other words, it’s nothing more than a welfare program funded as all other welfare programs are funded.

And Barack Obama — admittedly unintentionally — admitted just that:

Here’s how President Barack Obama answered CBS’s Scott Pelley’s question about whether he could guarantee that Social Security checks would go out on August 3, the day after the government is supposed to reach its debt limit: “I cannot guarantee that those checks [he included veterans and the disabled, in addition to Social Security] go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

There’s no money in the coffers to do it? Why? The “trust fund” supposedly has more than $2 trillion. That’s more than enough to keep sending out checks should the debt ceiling be reached without an agreement. In fact, checks could keep going out for a very long time while an agreement is hammered-out.

But then, that’s dependent upon the trust fund existing. Which it doesn’t.

Here’s why: Social Security has a trust fund, and that trust fund is supposed to have $2.6 trillion in it, according to the Social Security trustees. If there are real assets in the trust fund, then Social Security can mail the checks, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit…

Social Security status-quo defenders have assured us for the past 25 years that Social Security is fully funded—for the next 25 years, or 2036. So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund—$2.6 trillion allegedly—then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement possibly threaten seniors’ Social Security checks?

The answer is that the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted. And the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling.

The only reason the checks would stop going out would be if the government has to fund those checks with general revenues rather than through a trust fund. The debt ceiling only affects new debt — not spending in general. If the money really existed to fund Social Security, the checks should keep going out as planned.

But see, the fund doesn’t exist. The money doesn’t exist. It’s been squandered. So now Social Security is funded as all other welfare programs are funded. As now President Obama has — unintentionally — admitted.