On 26 Jul 2004 07:14:05 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Gary Coffman says...

I don't thing the government's been putting that money
into mutual funds or something.

That's the government's problem isn't it? If they haven't
been fiscally sound in their handling of the *trust fund*,
then they're liable for any shortfall.

If it were anybody else with the obligation, you would
be correct. But it isn't anyone else. Like the SS
'trust fund' that money goes out as fast as it goes in.

It is true that no one else has a big enough army to force
the government to pay its debts. The utilities can't even
get away with turning the government's lights out for
non-payment. But the government hasn't defaulted yet.

As I've now told you 3 times, there has been an excess of
funds paid into the "trust fund" to cover the decommissioning
of all the commercial power reactors currently operating in
this country. Unlike Social Security, the decommissioning
trust fund has been actuarially sound from day one.

The electric power industry has not been irresponsible.
They've sent in the checks when due. Now it is up to the
government to be responsible and provide the service it
contracted to provide. They can *not* legitimately claim
that they haven't been paid in full.

If the government has embezzled the money (and they
have, from every "trust fund" they've set up under law)
then they've got to pay it back out of current general tax
revenues, or con someone else to loan them the money
to cover it. That's the way they've operated since FDR.

Now Ed, and other tax and spend liberals, will tell you
what the government has done with the trust funds is
legitimate. I'm not going to argue about that here. But
I am telling you that they accepted the money for a
particular purpose, and the money was more than
sufficient to cover that purpose.

Even if the utilities were willing to write off the $22.5
billion dollars in decommissioning tax money they've
paid as a bad debt, and even if the utilities were willing
to accept responsibility for disposing of the waste they've
already paid the government to handle, they couldn't
legally do it. The government set things up by law so
that only the government is legally allowed to dispose
of high level waste.

The only remaining open question is will the government
obey its own laws? This is always an open question with
governments. If they won't, then our only recourse is to
take the rifle down from over the mantle and join the
revolution.

Gary