National
Debt - The Ticking Clock| National
Debt - The Ticking Clock |
08/30/08
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February 05, 2007 In order to fully understand the hypocrisy of our government, you are going to need to constantly refer to the following table. These are figures I have collected from U.S. Treasury Monthly Statements during the thirteen years I’ve been following this rip-off. These are some of the Social Security surplus amounts stolen by the Beltway Bandits. Combined with interest, Social Security now holds more than $2 trillion in markers and is twenty-three percent (23%) of the national debt:
Notice that the “interest” simply dumped in the so-called “trust,” at no expense whatsoever to the government since it’s only a matter of issuing more nonmarketable debt instruments under the pretense of having “borrowed” or “invested” Social Security’s surpluses, is a self perpetuating fund that would sustain Social Security indefinitely. All that is necessary is for the taxpaying public to come up with the cash when it’s needed. Any child with a solid high school math education can see that if the interest continues with an addition of at least five percent per year (less than is actually calculated by the Treasury’s five year model) by 2046 when we’re told the trust will be exhausted it will actually receive $634.2 billion in interest alone during that year and the total amount of accumulated interest from today forward to 2046 will be $2.6 trillion. And that’s if the government stops stealing the surplus, with no surplus being added every year from today. No surpluses whatsoever, just interest dumped into the account year after year. In other words, you've got to be dippy or a product of our "don't rock the boat" behavior modification schools to look at the chart above and still believe that Social Security is "in trouble." Add in whatever amounts the government will steal in additional surpluses and by cutting benefits, continuing to raise payroll taxes as they've done every year (see history), or whatever other tricks they can convince you are necessary, and from today forward the amounts will increase dramatically – for them – and including more compounding interest. Just imagine what could have been if this were real investment money instead of debt. Even when they tell you partial truths, the above is not what you hear from the major media. Witness CNN’s latest remarks:
Shall we examine the above line by line? “Social Security taxes from today’s workers go toward paying today’s retirees.” True, the Social Security Administration, housed in Baltimore, operates just like any other good insurance company in the country paying benefits from premiums coming in from today’s customers and hoping they never find it necessary to touch their “reserve” or liquidity. But hasn’t this been what the Beltway Bandits call “pay-as-you- go” and likened negatively to living paycheck-to-paycheck? “Social Security will continue to take in more money than it has to pay out through 2017” meaning that they have every intention to continue stealing dedicated taxes until that time – money that should be working for the supplemental retirement system instead of against it, instead of becoming debt that can only be redeemed by the same taxpaying public. Because CNN has not thought this through, they seem to condone it. Stealing from a retirement fund is OK with CNN. The second paragraph, “To pay full benefits…” enters the full realm of the “Pay-It-Again Sam scam” without drawing any conclusions. What more can you expect from the mathematically challenged word merchants? At least it’s a start, and could be added to the many other much more succinct confessions. Finally, the last paragraph draws upon the booga-booga scare story of the “baby-boomers” who will exhaust the so-called “trust fund” unless something is done to “reform” Social Security now. A super myth that’s almost as effective as “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and just as much of a falsehood. And what are authorities like Ben Bernanke, the new Chair of the Federal Reserve, and Henry Paulson, our third Secretary of the Treasury under Bush, telling us today? Here’s more from CNN:
All of this is based on the looming “baby boomer” myth, and they can’t even get the numbers right. The Boomer Myth is based on the idea that after World War II sixteen million service men and women returned from the various war zones and, in the next twenty years (the childbearing years of females) brought an unusual number of children into the population. They originally told us that “76 million” boomers were going to wreck havoc on entitlements like Social Security and Medicare – the entitlements supported by payroll taxes. Today, we are told that the boomer number has somehow increased to “78 million” and the first of these boomers will be eligible for Social Security’s early retirement next year, 2008, and they will put a tremendous strain on the supplemental retirement system until, in 2017, there is no more surplus coming in and we will have to turn to the so-called “trust fund” which will then be exhausted by 2046. And guess what, we're supposed to believe that all of these boomers survive to retirement, something that's never happened before. Who cares if the trust fund runs out? It doesn’t bother other entitlements. The Federal Employees Life & Health Insurance trust fund never has any revenue, no “holdings” or “receipts” at all, no money coming in, nothing, zero, zip, zilch, nada, squat. Yet, it spends hundreds of millions per month, and the more that’s spent, the larger the account becomes. Isn’t that wonderful? Why don’t we do the same with Social Security? Anyone with an Internet connection can follow this “trust” in the U.S. Treasury Monthly Statement. Here’s what it looked like in December:
And here’s what it looked like for the entire year of fiscal 2006:
Do you think this “trust fund” will be exhausted any time in the future? The Financial Management Service (FMS) calls this a “floating” trust. Why don’t we just "float" the same thing for Social Security? Here’s another federal insurance entitlement that would perish in the private sector. In "holdings" it is second only to Social Security with a current $704.5 billion and is 8.2 percent of the national debt.
Like Social Security, the annual interest against the previous year’s closing balance is paid, half in December and half in June of each year. The other figure of $28.2 billion (*) in the same column is what the FMS describes as “matching funds” against the sum of what employees paid in premiums or “receipts.” Translation: the government stole these premiums, spent them, and in September deposited an equal amount in nonmarketable bonds under the pretense that they merely “borrowed” or “invested” the money – just as they do with Social Security surpluses every month. Everything that you see in “red” in both of these programs represents money withdrawn for the Treasury’s General Fund of taxpayer dollars “earmarked” for something else in the budget or from money borrowed legitimately (a future tax). Either way, American taxpayers support both of these federal insurance programs. To then say that Social Security, the program that consistently produces a profit/surplus, is “in trouble” and not condemn their own similar entitlement programs is the height of hypocrisy. In fact, it makes hypocrisy into an art form.
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