While the nation watches thousands lose their retirement and pension plans, suffer readjustments and take loses, the federal government has its own infallible way of rewarding its employees on the backs of the taxpaying public.

Americans can't play the "there but for the grace of God" game forever. Even the mathematically challenged can’t deny these glaring examples of fraud and corruption in our government. Fraud that has been invented, sponsored and condoned by the same politicians who want to be re-elected this year. Yet, each of these scams continues unabated, unchallenged, and studiously avoided by the Washington outsiders who foot the bill.

The Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS)

Of the 144 current so-called trust funds holding “special” nonmarketable Treasury bonds in the Intragovernmental Holdings (IH) forty-two percent of the national debt, this is the second largest trust, second only to Social Security’s Federal Old Age & Survivors Insurance and the Federal Disability Insurance combined trusts normally referred to as “The Social Security Trust Fund.”

The Federal Employees Retirement fund is in the “red” every month except September. This means that eleven months of the year this account is “cashing in” some of its holdings by taking money from the general fund in order to make lavish payments to former federal employees, many who received as much as eight-to-one in matching funds when they were paying premiums. These “payouts” result in more than twenty billion a year for the country’s largest employer.

Any private insurance program that couldn't pay benefits from new accounts and the premiums coming in would go under in no time. This is exactly what's happening in the private sector.

However, in September, the last month of the government’s fiscal year, the FERS account receives a mysterious influx of bonds. This clandestine deposit is always enough to make up for all of the withdrawals that reduced “holdings” every other month and even increase the fund so that at the end of the year the account has more than it began the year with and the process can start all over next year. And no one will admit to how and why this mysterious deposit exists.

Nothing is paid back to the Treasury because you can’t use debt to pay down debt and that’s what these markers are – debt. In other words, if Linda Springer, Director of Personnel, went to John Snow, Secretary of the Treasury, and said; I’d like to cash in these bonds so we can pay back the money we took from the general fund in the last eleven months it would simply result in what economists call “a wash” with each side ending up exactly where they started.

As dozens of authorities have already confirmed, mostly in regard to the Social Security trust fund, these markers are demands on the Treasury that can be used only to draw taxpayer money on hand whether it’s from current income taxes, money borrowed from countries like China, or money budgeted to other programs. Since these are the only forms of government revenue, taxpayers are in exactly the same position they would be in if there were no trust fund – except that where your money is going would be too obvious for the pirates who prefer to run a scam.

Isn’t that nice? The government can simply legislate that a trust be set up, dump some “special” bonds in it, and they’ve got an unending horn of plenty. When the account starts to run low, just dump in some more bonds at no cost. Only the government can do this – and apparently get away with it.

The Federal Employees Life & Health trust

Here’s an account that doesn’t even bother with deposits. It never shows any “receipts” or income, not even interest against the previous years holdings. Month after month, the Treasury reports its receipts as nothing at all, zero, zip, zilch, nada, squat, the big goose egg.

Yet, every month the Treasury also reports “outlays” in the hundreds of millions. Outlays that can’t come from anywhere other than the general fund of taxpayer dollars.

And guess what. These “outlays” usually increase the assets or “holdings” of this account. Isn’t that a phenomenon similar to Christ changing a few fish and loaves of bread into enough to feed a multitude? It’s a modern money miracle taking place right under our noses. The more the government spends, the larger the account becomes. Could anyone but the many gods of government do that?

And the inquiring minds of our Fourth Estate wonder why Dick Cheney took so long to report the fact that he shot one of his fellow quail hunters. Besides avoiding the mandatory blood-alcohol test, he was probably making certain this backer on the fringes would be covered under one of the government’s life and health plans, cutting through the red tape to get him the best free socialistic medical care in the country. A benefit that's good enough for them, but not for you.

No Secret

Anyone with an Internet connection can follow these accounts by simply going to the U.S. Treasury’s Monthly Statement (http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html) where Table 8, “Trust Fund Impact on Budget Results and Investment Holdings” summarizes it for you. The site even provides an archive of back issues. It's all there in black and white.

I’ve found that the easiest way to do this is to download or view each report in PDF format where you can quickly go to the very end of the thirty-some page report and back up two pages. Voila, there it is, table eight.

As an alternative, or to check on my figures, you can simply go to my own website (Uncle-Scam.com) where years of these accounts are summarized under “Government Retirement (FERS)” (http://uncle-scam.com/Civil/a-main.html) and “Federal Employees Life & Health” (http://uncle-scam.com/Fed-Life-Health/a-main.html).

If you prefer to wait until the millionaire talking heads of the media or the bought and paid for stink tanks bring these subjects up, all I can say is “good luck.” Why worry? It only totals $3.4 trillion in fraud.