March 26, 2004

Golly gee, wow and holly molly, rising medical care costs are driving the Medicare system into turning to its trust fund. Not enough money is coming in from payroll taxes to support outflows and the rate of unemployment and decreased contributions from those who are working part-time or were forced to take jobs at less pay isn't helping. Can you imagine that? What a surprise.

Uncle Scam's spinmeisters are telling us that the Medicare program faces bankruptcy by the year 2019, so don't worry, we've still got several years to work on the problem. As of the end of February, there's $286.5 billion in nonmarketable U.S. Treasury bonds in the Medicare Trust Fund—the combination of the Federal Hospital Insurance and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance trust funds. Thirteen years before we will find ourselves in exactly the same position we find ourselves today—having to pay to support the system.

Remarkable isn't it? At present, this trust fund is exactly four percent of our ever increasing national debt. Debt is debt. It's not something you can take to the bank. It's not something you can use to feed the kids and pets. But it is something that will cost you money now. Payments are due.

For years, and especially since 1983 when payroll taxes were raised to their 15.3 percent level for every worker in the country, the federal government has been stealing a healthy chunk of this retirement and health care money. The Beltway Bandits have been spending that money wherever they pleased.

Of course, they don't admit to theft, embezzlement, or malfeasance. That would be a crime. Like any common criminal, they claim innocence. They tell you that they merely "borrowed" the money, calling it "off budget" revenue. That's why they put these nonmarketable nonsensical bogus bonds in an equally bogus trust fund. That's how Medicare became four percent of the national debt.

Can you imagine a pickpocket, purse snatcher, burglar, bank robber or common thief standing before a judge and jury telling them that he merely "borrowed" the money, and pointing to notes he left in a lockbox, IOUs that he claims cover or make amends for his deed? If you can imagine that, then you've got the picture. It's that ludicrous.

If that same crook went on to tell you that his IOUs really call for the same people he robbed replacing the stolen money plus interest, you would have him declared insane. But that's exactly what your government expects from you, the taxpayers. The bogus bonds held by the Medicare trust funds are not IOUs, they're UOUs. And you will pay to redeem them.

This scam was coming unraveled in the months immediately preceding 9/11, after Paul O'Neill, then Secretary of the Treasury publicly admitted that there were "no viable assets" in trust funds such as the Social Security trust fund. That he had no bags of money buried in his backyard.

This wasn't the first time such a confession had come from one of the Beltway Bandits. It was merely the first time that the media picked up on it and began investigating.

It took Alan Greenscam, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to set things straight when he said; "The only thing that matters is that they (the markers) are enforceable." But the media and newshounds were too busy having too much fun laughing about how useless these trust funds were to pay attention or realize the enormity of the crime. And these phony trusts certainly are not useless to the Beltway Bandits.

Well, now we are about to see how the government uses bogus trust funds to double bill American taxpayers plus interest. All you have to do is follow the money. Find out where the money really comes from to cover expected shortcomings in Medicare. Watch the Beltway Bandits charge you again for taxes workers already paid once before, but they stole.

Cashing-in these bogus "holdings" in the Medicare trust funds means that the money must come either from (1) raising payroll taxes (2) borrowing from investors by selling real securities to investors both foreign and domestic (3) taking it from other existing programs or some combination of these three.

You can be pretty sure that the government is not going to raise taxes during an election year or anytime they can avoid it. That leaves borrowing from investors or taking it from discretionary programs like education, agriculture, and so forth. Either way, you will pay now or sometime in the future.

Having already set a course to put things on their credit card, raise the national debt another $700 billion or so this year, you can be almost certain that the Beltway Bandits will put it on the shoulders of tomorrow's taxpayers, you, your children and grandchildren.

Most importantly, they will do this without legislation and without most people noticing. The national debt will simply rise further and everyone will lament the tremendous expenses of fighting the war on terrorism or some other handy excuse.

The fact that this "Pay-It-Again Sam" scam works is already evident in the fact that your government has already double-billed you $12 billion this year by cashing-in holdings in the Unemployment Trust Fund on top of $26 billion they double billed you last year.

Has anyone noticed that the Unemployment Trust Fund has already dropped from a high of $92 billion in 2001 to today's low of $36 billion in bogus holdings? That's $56 billion taxpayers have come up with to cover money employers paid previously but the government spent elsewhere. And this is just one of the 24 entitlement trust funds set up by the Beltway Bandits to cover hundreds of billions they've stolen in dedicated taxes.

Has anyone noticed how many of the twenty-four entitlement trust funds are being drawn down today to replace money the government has stolen? Of course not.

The same thing will happen with the Medicare trust funds and none of the so-called fiscal watchdogs, including AARP, will notice or bother to report it.

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Senator Ted Kennedy appeared on Tim Russert's Meet The Press show last Sunday, March 21st, bragging about the $237 billion surplus the Clinton administration gave us in fiscal 2000 compared to the deficits Bush is running. But he failed to mention, and Russert is too dumb or afraid to ask where this great surplus came from—or remind him that $150 billion came from robbing entitlement surpluses with Social Security contributing $95.4 billion that year.

Social Security is still producing a surplus despite a sour economy and fewer workers contributing. Last year, fiscal 2003, it produced an $82 billion surplus, down from previous years, but not chicken feed. What's going to happen when this trust fund, currently standing at more than $1.5 trillion and 22 percent of the national debt must be drawn down?

The major reason we're talking about Medicare today is because so many candidates for office are using prescription drug costs as a campaign issue. They have no real solutions to this problem other than buying our own American manufactured products from Canada instead of regulating the pharmaceutical industry or throwing out their lobbyists who number more than one for every member of Congress. But it's turning the spotlight on Medicare for the moment.

Don't worry, the problem will disappear just as soon as elections are over and we will all learn to live with higher and higher hospital and "doctor of your choice" costs like the more than half trillion dollars of your money that Bush plans to give the pharmaceutical industry to keep them happy while providing less expensive drugs to survivors three years from now. Whoopee.

But why listen to me? After all, "if one person could solve the problem you wouldn't need AARP."

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