Dear Mr. President and Honorable Members of Congress;

We seniors and others are not at all worried about getting our Social Security checks. We know exactly how much surplus is being generated by excessive payroll taxes that will continue to produce surpluses for, as Senator Moynihan put it, the government to enjoy.

All anyone has to do to determine these huge surplus amounts is to watch the increase to the Social Security trust funds dutifully reported by the Treasury and subtract the annual “interest” you dump in these debit black hole accounts at no cost to the government by the way.

We do not appreciate your increasing our indebtedness in this manner and we especially do not appreciate your pretending to “borrow” or “invest” the surpluses today’s workers are providing while you spend that dedicated entitlement money elsewhere. We call that malappropriation.

In fact, we are getting very tired of listening to you talk about “savings” while you run up the national debt by borrowing trillions, mostly from foreign countries whose central banks are finally warning us to get our financial house in order and threatening to come off the dollar as it drops in value. Coupled with large deficits, this makes continued borrowing look like a form of welfare.

Most of all, we are fed up with the government’s pretending that the same money can be both spent and saved, that the fictitious “holdings” in fictitious trust funds can be used to sustain the life of Social Security or any other entitlement that is still producing or at one time produced surpluses that built the UOUs in these debt accounts in the first place.

We understand how this scheme is being used to double tax us plus interest. We also understand how these accounts are used to make the taxpaying public cover what other entitlements have already paid in surplus that the government spent elsewhere.

We’ve seen how money is borrowed on the bond market or cut from discretionary elements of the budget to cover withdrawals from the Unemployment trust fund or the Federal Employees Retirement System for instance. We’ve seen how we are put on the hook to cover benefits after the government has spent the surpluses contributed respectively by employers and by federal employees in these examples.

We know that if Social Security turns to its trust for support, the government will face the unpleasant task of either (1) raising taxes (2) borrowing even more money (3) taking funds from everything from education to veteran’s benefits, or any combination thereof.

We know that this extra burden will be laid at the feet of America's taxpayers who in large part are the same people who contributed surpluses in the first place. The government's options drawing on these so-called trusts are the normal factors of government revenue and would be the same if there were no trust funds at all. The sole purpose of these trusts is double taxation plain and simple -- and without legislation or an effective public voice in the matter.

In short, America's workers might just as well have walked into the U.S. Treasury, plunked down bundles of cash, and said; Here sell me some debt, and don't forget to add interest so I'll have even more to pay you back. It's that ludicrous. And it's just as ludicrous that the Social Security trust funds are now more than 22 percent of and keeping pace with the skyrocketing national debt.

Therefore:

We strongly recommend that, in order to show financial responsibility, you forget about Social Security reform for the time being, it doesn’t need to be immediately “saved” or "fixed," and instead begin eliminating the entire “Intragovernmental Holdings” $3.2 trillion fraudulent portion of the national debt. This could probably be accomplished by simply deleting at least $70 billion a month without upsetting the legitimate bond market. And don't forget to burn the Parkersburg Papers.

Many in the general public have not yet noticed the build-up of these fraudulent accounts. Many may not notice your eliminating them either. This opportunity to do the right thing may not be available for long.

Of the 143 trust funds in this "Intragovernmental Holdings" side of the national debt, 91 percent of the holdings are in at least 24 entitlements each in the same boat as Social Security. At the close of fiscal 2004, these others include the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), Military Retirement, Medicare, Veteran's Life Insurance, Unemployment, Airports & Airways, Highways, Harbor Maintenance, Railroad Retirement, and even your own Judicial Officers Retirement.

Of course, this corrective action would include eliminating the nine percent in “perks” that the government has set up for itself represented by 119 non-entitlement trusts such as the $89 billion State Department’s “Unconditional Gift Fund” that disappeared in fiscal 2002 without anyone noticing and without legislation. Congress can then decide which of these deserve to be re-established with real funds if you can afford them.

Reducing this much of the national debt is not a payment against a credit card or permission to borrow even more money legitimately under contract. On its present course, we feel the market will take care of suppressing that sort of legitimate borrowing anyway.

In closing, we believe it is economic stupidity to think that a nation can borrow itself into prosperity and then tax the people to pay the principal and interest on the debt.

Further, we feel you should pay very close attention to what your own Securities and Exchange Commission is doing to A.I.G. Insurance as reported in the Business Section of the New York Times on April 4, 2005, under the title "How a Titan of Insurance Ran Afoul of the Government." To prosecute companies in the private sector for the same things you are doing with Social Security Insurance money is hypocrisy of the highest order.

We are also tired of your telling us that you will not raise payroll taxes when they have been raised every year that you’ve been in office and it has been done by increasing the “cap” from $80,400 to $90,000 salaries. Stop it. It’s beginning to sound like “weapons of mass destruction.”

You claim that everything is still open and on the table. Well, put these suggestions there. And please take this letter in the spirit with which it’s intended – we are mad as hell about what you’re doing to the futures of our children, grandchildren, and the country as a whole.

Sincerely,