The SS surplus was spent by Congress, and replaced with non-marketable IOUs managed by Treasury (not securities!), literally kept in a file cabinet in West Virginia. There are no assets in the "trust fund" and there is no legal requirement for the government to pay anything on its Social Security promises.

Whether the trust fund contains anything of nonzero value or not (and I would say that it doesn't) is immaterial. The program is unsustainable in the long term as currently implemented because the ratio of people above the cutoff age to people contributing will be so high that the program is losing money indefinitely. There are many knobs we can turn to solve this problem, however. We could start killing old people, move the cutoff age to be later, limit the number of years benefits last, cut benefits, raise the payroll tax that partially funds the program, admit that the program has to be funded using other taxes and just accept that, implement a long-term policy of monetizing the program, lie about inflation so that the cost of living adjustment fails to retain value in real terms, or make a long-term commitment to explosive population growth. Right now I think our plan is a mix of lying about inflation and increasing the cutoff age.

I am not a Republican and I consider the word somewhat insulting, much like the word Democrat.

There may be some Ponzi aspects to US Federal budget, but that isn't it.

How is transferring money from workers to non-workers is reminiscent of a Ponzi sceme in any way? There's no imaginary wealth being created, it's just a transfer of wealth from younger to older generation. I wouldn't bet that future young will be as silent about it as we are, but I wouldn't completely discard it as a "Ponzi scheme" either.