It's physically impossible to "raid" a fund that has no money in it, a fund that contains nothing but debt? There is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund. By the time debt is recorded in the trust, the money has already been spent.

Way back on June 19, 2001, Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill told us there were not any "positive assets," no money, in the Social Security Trust Funds and he's the man who manages the fund besides being one of its six trustees.

Anyone with any sense should have known that already. How else do you suppose the Social Security Trust Fund became more than 20 percent of the national debt?

For years, the politicians and bureaucrats have been pretending to "borrow" surplus entitlement money. Part of this pretense is to place "special obligation" nonmarketable bonds in a trust fund accounting for every dollar stolen. On top of that, they award the trust annual interest with no cash involved, they simply hand the trust more bogus bonds.

Whenever the trust fund increases, it goes up because the pirates have already taken the money. It doesn't rise before they steal the surplus, only after.

Last year, fiscal 2001, the Social Security Trust Funds rose a total of $162.7 billion to become a little more than 20 percent of the national debt. You can follow this yourself on the US Treasury's Monthly Report web pages, or you can go to the Taxpayers Union for Financial Freedom (TUFF) web site where I personally post it for you under "Important Numbers" (www.get-tuff.com)

Take names and kick butt in this election year. Any politician who talks about "raiding" the Social Security Trust Fund is either a liar or too stupid to be working for us. Fire them. The same goes for anyone talking about "lock-boxes," promises not to touch retirement and health care funds, or when farting in the elevator accuses the other guy of doing it.

If you look closely at the chart above, you will notice that the report for August, 2001, shows the trust fund going down a little. This was such a surprise to me that I immediately called the Treasury. What they told me was that because the September Labor Day weekend started on Saturday the first and ran through Monday the third, September checks to the retired and disabled had been mailed early. Therefore, the charge went against August accounting. Social Security did not draw on or cash-in any of its debt bonds. That sounded reasonable to me.

If the above isn't enough to convince you that trust funds are never raided and the surplus is spent as fast as payroll taxes come into the Treasury's General Fund, then consider this.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have Budget Committees, Finance Committees, Ways & Means and Tax Committees working constantly on future budgets. They also have the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as well as the administration's General Accounting Office (GAO) and Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) to help. They are all working on expected and predicted "on budget" and "off budget" receipts and spending.

On Budget revenue is primarily income tax money, personal and corporate. Off Budget money is entirely from entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, gas taxes, and so forth.

These politicians and bureaucrats are working years in advance of today's revenues. By the time budgets are finally approved, the Beltway Bandits know almost exactly how much Social Security surplus to expect. And they've planned where to spend it.

Barring surprises like the onset of war, huge natural disasters, or a receding economy, everything goes as planned. Like any well-run business, they hate surprises.

So start keeping a list of liars, anyone who talks about "raiding" trust funds that never hold money, lock-boxes when real trust funds are already lock boxes, or one party accusing the other of relying on Social Security money. They all do it. If they lie to you, don't vote for them.