The Idolatry of Ideology - Why Tax Cuts Hurt the Economy

alternatives ^ | Russ Beaton

[Chi-townChief]

The question is: What does Russ Beaton?

[discostu]

There's some cool stuff over there. Still haven't found actual year by year budget-vs-surplus over a useful length of time. Though that data might not be so greqt, remember Clinton's "budget surplus" was done by internal borrowing from SocSec and Medicaire which doesn't count as borrowing like selling t-bills.

[familyofman]

"remember Clinton's "budget surplus" was done by internal borrowing from SocSec and Medicaire which doesn't count as borrowing like selling t-bills."
True, but imagine how much larger the current and projected deficits would be if they weren't partially offst by SS & Medicare surpluses. The accounting (smoke & mirrors) used by the US gov't is so obtuse that many times it puts Enron & Worldcom to shame - a cliche about liars & numbers comes to mind.
I'm going to check the Federal Reserve website to see what kind of historical #'s they have, I might even try some of the big bokerages houses i deal with have.

[discostu]

But you still have to payback SocSec and Medicare (in theory anyway, you can always "repay" it the same way we "repay" t-bills), these intergovernmental loans work just like t-bills only they don't pay interest and they're hiddden in a corner of the ledger normal citizens don't look at. The money was still borrowed and still has to be paid back, as a bonus it's not being used by SocSec or Medicare in a way that could earn interest and help keep those program afloat, and it means the payback won't go to an American citizen (even though they just float more t-bills to pay t-bills at least the raw cash goes to a person as ROI). The "offset" would be more properly described as a lie, basically they're paying some things with MasterCard only showing us the Visa bill and claiming that's the entire deficit.