I know, a surplus seems impossible when Mitch Daniels, Director of the Government Accounting Office, tells us that we're going to have a "$165 billion deficit this year," but that's also a fairy tale. The deficit, even the way he defines it, is going to be much greater.

To understand what's really going on, we need to start with the year of the nation's greatest surplus and deal with the government's Enron/WorldCom style double bookkeeping balance sheet.

Here's what we had in surplus at the end of fiscal 2000:

The first thing we've got to do is get rid of the words the pirates use to disguise and confuse things.

Income includes both individual and corporate taxes. Entitlements include Social Security and Medicare from payroll taxes, gas taxes, airline taxes or a total of twenty different taxes people pay in expectation of goods and services directly related to the specific tax. You pay for things, and you are "entitled" to get them.

Notice that these Entitlement taxes appear here as a positive asset. Later, we will see that they are magically transformed into a debt, a liability, a negative.

This was the year that the Clinton administration paid $231 billion against the national debt and, overall, the debt only went up $18 billion, another anomaly of government bookkeeping.

The national debt is directly related to the subject at hand:

Again, we're dealing with words meant to confuse and mislead. The government uses the phrase "public debt" to make you believe that it's the only portion for which you are responsible. Actually, it should be called "Investor Debt" because it all comes from investors willing to loan the fed money under contract.

Likewise, the phrase "Intragovernmental Holdings" (a Greenspeak mouthful) is meant to make you believe that you do not have to worry about this category, that one governmental department owes another or that the government "owes itself" and that somehow the pirates can pay this off with something other than taxpayer money. A feat that would be impossible even if they were all John D. Rockefeller clones or if we all paid admission to national parks three times a day. This part of the debt is just as much the taxpaying public's responsibility as the first category.

The Intragovernmental Holdings side should be called "Entitlements" because that's what accounts for 92 percent of it. The other eight percent is perks and miscellaneous debt that the crooks have set up for themselves. Everything here is represented by "special obligation" bogus bonds, markers, or demands on future taxes that are the only way this side can be paid off. (see: Trust Fund List)

It's here where we find the same "off budget" entitlement surpluses recorded as debt with annual interest added on the balance from the previous year:

Now, let's compare the year of greatest surpluses with the first year of the Bush administration in terms of surpluses:

Wow, we had a deficit in fiscal 2001 that no one mentioned. We heard about the total surplus being the second largest in U.S. history, but we didn't hear about the deficit of a minus $33.5 billion.

The government defines a deficit only in terms of their "on budget" receipts and expenditures. They completely ignore the money borrowed/stolen from entitlements that, as you can see, increased in 2001 over the previous year with Social Security alone accounting for $98.7 billion of that figure and 18 other entitlements making up the balance. How's that for hiding debt? The sort of betrayal of public trust that President Bush says should land the perpetrators in jail.

Now, let's compare the national debt for these two years:

Notice that we paid down the Investor side of the debt in a year when we also had a deficit of $33.5 billion by their terms. Here's what seems to have happened.

The government probably had close to $100 billion in the Treasury's General Fund for reducing the Investor side of the national debt in their debt laundering operation. This is a separate crime covered elsewhere (see: Debt Laundering). They are not forced to decide how much they're going to put against the debt until the last minute, until the close of the fiscal year on the last working day of September. Being a not-for-profit organization, the books are brought to a zero balance at the close of the fiscal year. Any cash on hand goes against liabilities outstanding which, of course, is the national debt. It's automatic, not requiring legislation or a decision by anyone except the accountants.

When 9/11 occurred, just weeks prior to the close of the fiscal year, emergency money went to all sorts of things and in terms of surpluses we ended up $33.5 billion in the red and only $66 billion going against the debt. That's not so hard to accept is it?

It should also be noted that the expected "On Budget" surplus prior to the tax cut and refund legislation had been predicted at $107 billion. The $300 refund to individual income taxpayers took care of about $38 billion of that and the rest was spent prior to September eleventh. Most of the $33.5 billion deficit came from emergency expenditures between 9/11 and the last working day in September.

You should also notice that Entitlement debt is down close to $50 billion compared to fiscal 2000 when you might expect it to be up. No entitlement taxes have been reduced and the surplus from entitlements was higher than 2000. Every cent stolen to spend elsewhere requires, in the "borrowing" rip-off game, a dollar-for-dollar increase to the Entitlement national debt side, so why isn't it showing a greater number than it did in 2000?

The reasons for this is that three of the twenty entitlements drew on their debit black hole trust funds for operating cash during the year. Because of the economy and layoffs, the Unemployment Trust Fund was drawn upon for more than it had in receipts. Because of 9/11 and the immediate airline problems, the Airport & Airways Trust Fund was drawn upon. And the Department of Transportation (DOT) was in the process of drawing all of their holdings from the Highway Trust Fund for repair to Interstate Highways.

In every one of these cases, taxpayers are footing the bill in the Pay-It-Again Sam scam of double taxation. Taxpayer money was and is today, right now, being drawn out of the Treasury's General Fund of taxpayer dollars from this year in order to redeem bogus bonds held by these three entitlement trusts. We are again paying taxes that have already been paid once before, sometimes paid by other people like travelers. When it happens with a trust as large as Social Security—we're in big trouble. The only thing saving us is the fact that Social Security really doesn't have any major problems, despite all the scare stories you hear.

It's difficult to get Congress people to admit to this double taxation. When the DOT first started drawing on the Highway Trust Fund, I wrote Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and quite simply asked him where the money was coming from. He sent me a twenty-five dollar Library of Congress book on highway construction that I gave to a local contractor. To top it off, one of his staff called me to ask if my question had been answered satisfactorily. I'm afraid I blew my stack at that kid. But I digress.

The crucial thing to grasp today is that entitlement surpluses are still there, big as life, and they are costing us a bundle both in terms of services we are not getting for money we've paid and in terms of double taxation, with interest added. And it's not going to get any better because the crooks have no intention of giving up their slush fund money.

We will not know the surplus situation for a month or so, but look at the national debt increase so far this year:

Last Monday, August 28, we passed the $400 billion mark in debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay off.

With the president telling us that the war in Afghanistan is costing us a mere billion per month, $12 billion a year, there's certainly got to be a lot of spending for other things like Homeland Security, reorganization of our intelligence sources, shortfalls in income tax receipts, crazy farm bills, and so forth, for our government to find itself needing to borrow (and steal) this much money. We're on our way to setting a new debt record.

Is this a responsible way for the richest nation in the world to act? How much Administratium do you suppose is involved? And can we really afford to start a war with Iraq or anyone else?

Again, let's compare the last three years remembering that we've still got more than a month to go in this last year.

As you can see, entitlements are hanging in there without much change. As soon as the economy straightens out, people go back to work, and three smaller entitlements stop drawing on their double taxation accounts, the entitlements alone will be right back to increasing the national debt by more than a quarter trillion per year. This is all money stolen right out of the taxpayer's pocket, particularly the working man's payroll taxes. And then you are expected to pay it again, pay a second time plus interest.

So what do you now think of politicians and bureaucrats who tell you "surpluses are gone" or that "we've got deficits as far as the eye can see?"

We've got a government creating surpluses through taxation, surpluses that they can "borrow" from their intended use in order to create more debt, putting us in the position of buying debt and then buying our own money back again. And most of it comes from your retirement and health care payments. How insane and criminally irresponsible is that?

And our President tells us that people who betray the public trust should be in handcuffs.