"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 17:30:07 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...


And, as Cato, Treasury, OMB, and every other source that knows what
it's
talking about says, there was a financial surplus in those years I
listed
above. Current-accounts surplus, and a decline in the national debt.
Net,
actual, real-money surplus.

Odd that the treasury says the national debt went up during those
years.

Where does it say that, Dave?

In the initial link I showed you, where you said the same as Clinton,
"Yabut, you can count SS money as income even though it's already spent".

No, it didn't say that at all. It listed columns of numbers. Then it
explained what those columns mean, in the quote I posted from the Treasury
Dept.'s website. It said the meaningful one was the second column. Which is
what virtually everyone else says.


As I've quoted here a couple of times,
Treasury tells you what the meaningful column is. It appears you're
reading
the one that is essentially meaningless -- the one that includes
Treasury
bonds that are not additions to debt.

Right, because a bond doesn't represent debt now?

That's right. Now you're getting it!

If a bond is held by a private citizen, another government, or some
non-governmental institution, it's an obligation. If it's held by another
branch of the federal government, it is not. It's internal accounting, based
on statutory law, which does not represent an addition to debt -- or any
debt at all, in truth.

That's what all those explanations mean. I can post another 100 or so from
credible sources, if you want. g

Or, you could just follow the money. The revenue from SS comes in, it winds
up in general revenues, and it gets spent -- first, to pay current SS
obligations. Any remaining balance (there usually is one) goes to pay for
other things, out of the general fund. No additions to debt, anywhere.

That's what really happens. In those terms, there have been five years of
total surplus, including the four-year period of FY 1998 - 2001.

When you toss in a bond, the money changes hands a couple more times but the
same thing happens in the end: The revenue from SS comes in; current SS
obligations are paid; surplus is used to buy Treasury bonds; Treasury adds
that cash to revenues from selling bonds, where it goes into the general
fund and it gets spent. A piece of paper is created (the bond) but there is
nothing to back it up, and it becomes just as ethereal when it comes due.
When it's paid back the payment comes from general revenues. The payment
will be based on statutory obligations, not on the bonds. The bonds just
serve as a way-stop for money on its way back. Financially, it works exactly
the same as it would if the bonds never existed.

The Treasury bond has no current value. The value is in the future revenues
that will pay for it when the *real* obligation, the statutory obligation to
pay SS recpients -- comes due. As I said, it works exactly the same way
whether there is a bond involved or not.

But, historically, the "national debt" has been the sum of all Treasury
bonds. A significant portion of them (something like half of the total
national debt) are now these intra-governmental bonds, which is purely an
accounting artifact, and it always is involved in some accounting which is
based on statutory obligations, anyway. Mixing up the real debt -- debt held
by the public -- and intragovernmental debt produces a cockamamie number
that is in the left column of the table you linked to. As Treasury itself
says, it is not the meaningful number. It includes bonds that do not
actually add to the debt; the intra-governmental bonds that are mere
accounting notes for statutory obligations.


I'm sure there's some real subtle bookkeeping scam that I'm not seeing
here,
and I really, really don't care how you cook the numbers to make a
negative
look like a positive. You believe it, I don't.

The truth of it is that you're cooking the numbers (or, more likely, just
repeating numbers that you haven't examined closely enough) to make a
positive look like a negative. You assume that all Treasury securities are
additions to debt. As I hope you realize by now, they are not.

I don't see any chance that
either of us are going to change the other's mind about this in
specific...

I have hope for you. g You are intelligent, and surely the facts are
beginning to sink into your head by now. Maybe not today, or next week, but
sometime in the future when the issue comes up again you'll know that there
is a curveball in here, and you'd better look at it again before making
unequivocal statements.

... or Clinton's history of lying in general.

Aha. I thought you were being objective. g But of course I knew all along
you were not. Nobody who knows what he's doing comes up with a figure that
includes intra-governmental Treasury securities and says that number
"proves" that there were no surpluses during the Clinton years. The only way
you come up with that is by a really queer accident, or if your sources are
anti-Clinton polemics that cherry-pick the data sources to try to show that
white is black.

Which is exactly what I said in the beginning of this conversation, and why
I asked where you got your numbers. I know where Gunner gets his, but I was
curious about whether you really knew enough about the subject that you had
some reason for saying the same thing that he's saying. What he's saying is
a crock of bull, because his sources are all about making every positive
thing that might be associated with any Democrat, and Clinton in particular,
look like a negative. That's what Gunner does with most of his online life.

--
Ed Huntress