[rollo tomasi]

Fact-check.org, lol.

Riddle me this and Fact-check.org too

The public debt went up so this isn't true.



For part of the rest of the story:



Boiled down to its basics, that's the budget "surplus" hoax that's coming from the president and Congress. In 1998, there was approximately $120 billion spent out of revenue earmarked for trust funds like the Social Security, highway and unemployment compensation trust funds. There's absolutely nothing in those trust funds except Treasury Department IOUs.

That means that when Congress reports there is a $60 billion surplus, we should subtract $120 billion from that so-called surplus. That would leave us with minus $60 billion -- a $60 billion deficit for 1998. As such, budget surplus talk is nothing less than a sleight-of-hand accounting hoax perpetrated on the American people.

The budget situation is actually worse. The federal government uses accounting practices that if used by private companies would land the CEO and the board of trustees in jail. Here's why: Today's estimated federal government liability is about $20 trillion. These are federal government promises-to-pay such as the public debt, Social Security, railroad retirement, bank deposit and savings and loan insurance, guaranteed student loans, International Monetary Fund and so forth.

When private companies have future promises-to-pay, general accounting practices require that they hold actuarially based reserves to cover those claims. How much reserves do you think Congress has set aside to cover federal obligations? If you say zilch, nada, zippo, go to the head of the class. The bottom line is that if Congress followed general accounting practices, instead of a reported surplus, there would be a budget deficit of at least $200 billion.

You say, "Williams, wow, what should Americans do?" Right now, we're deciding whether it's OK for a president to lie to the American people. While we're at it, we might also decide whether we should accept lies from Congress. We should give them our answer at election time.

Walter Williams explaining the fiscal bullcrap that will be peddled while it was happening (And the numbers proved him right).

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams102198.asp

[OIFVeteran]

Every single Budget has included the surpluses from Social Security, highway, and unemployment compensation.

No government budget has every used the same accrual techniques as a business. So comparing apples to apples Clinton did balance the budget and reduce the deficit.

“Other readers have noted a USA Today story stating that, under an alternative type of accounting, the final four years of the Clinton administration taken together would have shown a deficit. This is based on an annual document called the “Financial Report of the U.S. Government,” which reports what the governments books would look like if kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than the cash basis that the government has always used. The principal difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of $69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46 billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those three years.”
Fact-check.org