The federal government looks at things differently. Having borrowed and run up the national debt $421 billion during fiscal 2002, the government claims that it had a mere $159 billion deficit. And this is not counting the annual interest that was paid in cash to investors holding legitimate long term Treasury securities, interest paid to the tune of about $210 billion in cash.

You know something is screwy right off the bat, don't you? Unless you swallow the cockamamie propaganda story that government accounts are so complicated the average man can't hope to understand them, your citizen's Def-Con alarm should immediately jump up a notch or move to a more dramatic color.

Government budgets are the same as your own. The numbers are enormous and the subjects are varied, but that's the only difference. At the end of the year, the books should come to the same conclusion in exactly the same way, especially in regard to how much you went in the hole.

If we had a true deficit of $421 billion last year, and the government claims it was only $159 billion, then you better hang onto your hats because Mitch Daniels of the Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) now claims that the deficit for fiscal 2003 is going to be somewhere between $200 and $300 billion.

With that conservative estimate from the head of OMB in mind, where do you suppose the national debt is going to end up this year? To the moon Alice.

In the last fifteen months, the Bush administration has run up the national debt $600 billion ($598.3 billion)--$421 billion in fiscal 2002--$177.5 billion in the first three months, the first quarter, of fiscal 2003. This year, we will top a two year increase of one trillion.

You better learn how your government fudges the books. It's worse than anything Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, or any of the corporate scoundrels ever dreamed of, but probably where they learned.

Crooked Bookkeeping

We still do not have an approved budget for fiscal 2003 that started on October 1, 2002. That's how much of a mess it is. And the Beltway Bandits have been working on this 2003 budget for years in advance.

They have Senate and House Budget Committees, Finance Committees, Ways & Means, Appropriations and Tax committees, all with many subcommittees, working on the subject. Besides that, they've got the OMB, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the General Accounting Office (GAO) to help them.

What these august bodies do is estimate how much revenue they can expect and where they're going to spend it. That's all.

Once a budget is approved, it's set in stone. Nothing can change it. Unanticipated disasters are handled by borrowing money to cover them. That much is permitted by the Constitution.

A deficit is defined as the amount they go over budget. That's simple enough isn't it? If they received two trillion in revenue and they spend two trillion, two hundred and fifty-nine billion, then they went "over budget" by and have a deficit of $259 billion.

Here's where the hookers are hidden. Try these at home:

1) If there was a shortfall in personal and corporate income tax revenue because of unexpected layoffs in a sour economy, then the crooks will borrow enough money to make up for it. And they will not count that money borrowed because it just brought the budget back up to where it should have been. It didn't put them "over budget."

2) When they set the budget, they knew how much they would be required to pay out over the year to cover annual interest to investors who previously contracted to loan them money honestly. They know where the honest "Public Debt" side of the national debt ended last year and they know the rate of interest they've committed to pay these people. Thus, more than $210 billion went into the annual budget last year as a "mandatory" expense. Since it was calculated into the budget, there is no problem. This interest is not putting them "over budget" although it's a continuing liability.

3) We would all be better off if the pirates just stole this money and ran, but they don't. Just as they estimate personal and corporate income tax revenue, the bandits estimate how much surplus they can expect from Social Security payroll taxes as well as the surpluses from 18 other entitlements. Last year, fiscal 2002, the Social Security surplus by itself was $89 billion. All entitlements together accounted for $149 billion. This money is figured into the budget as "off budget" revenue and they plan to spend it as fast as it comes in. Because they play a scam of "borrowing" this money from taxpayers, they put special bogus bonds in equally phony trust funds and the national debt goes up dollar-for-dollar. Because this too was calculated into the budget, it doesn't put them "over budget."

4) If there's a shortfall in #3 above because of high unemployment for instance, too many people on relief, they'll do the same thing they do in #1 above.

5) Most heinous of all, and to carry out the borrowing fiction of #3 above, the Beltway Bandits pay the phony entitlement trust funds annual interest. There's no money involved here. They simply hand the trust funds more bogus bonds. But the national debt goes up accordingly. Since there is no real money involved with this interest, at least until our children must redeem these markers, they do not count it like real money putting themselves "over budget."

Are you starting to see why the real deficit was $421 billion last year and the double taxation bookkeeping and the hiding debt involved with their $159 billion deficit claim? The fraud that makes Enron and Arthur Andersen look like girl scouts eating some of their own cookies?

Why don't you try that with your wife, husband, partner, or bank? Just tell them that you planned to borrow $4,000 or $40,000 before the year began and figured it into your budget. Therefore, you are really not in the hole by that amount. You saw it coming and allowed for it. See how your bank reacts to that.

Forty-two percent of the national debt is fraudulent and could be eliminated tomorrow without harm to anyone in the private sector.

This does not mean that you or your children will escape paying for these bogus bonds. Right now, today, as you read this, eleven of the smaller trust funds are drawing down on their phony holdings in order to make ends meet. The Unemployment Trust Fund is the largest in this position.

It means that right now your income taxes are covering the redemption of markers that are there because someone else, employers in the case of unemployment, paid these taxes previously. That's double taxation plain and simple, with interest added, and it’s happening right now without a peep from any watchdogs inside the Beltway.

The alternative is to borrow the money to cover the shortfalls and amounts to the same thing. George W. Bush is currently borrowing us into oblivion.

People better start paying attention to this scam. It's going to cost everyone a small fortune when the big trust funds like Social Security can't make ends meet. There is no money in any entitlement trust fund. You've been had.

As Jerry Heaster of the Kansas City Star puts it; "Any government leader who discusses the Social Security trust fund as if it comprises real financial assets with marketable value isn't worthy of being taken seriously."

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