The latest catch phrase or politically agreed way to try sugar coating a major crime is the phrase “unfunded liabilities.” It’s something like saying that a mass grave is filled with inoperative humanoids. In this case, it's a big black hole filled with trash called "trust fund securities."

Unfunded liabilities are debt. Debt in the form of markers deposited in fictional trust funds that will someday have to be paid-off by the taxpaying public. And they were deposited there by the government that took the American worker’s extra retirement money and spent it somewhere else while claiming to have merely “borrowed” or “invested” this enormous amount of cash. They do this by pretending that the same money can be both spent and saved. It’s a con – a scam that results in words such as “unfunded liabilities” and sometimes "government obligations." Debt.

Both republicans and democrates, both proponents and opponents of reform, will do anything to avoid the word "debt" and especially the fact that they are already $1.7 trillion in hock to Social Security.

The Social Security trust funds are now 22.3 percent of the national debt. And there is no one but you, the taxpayer, to pay off any part of the national debt.

During an interview on CNN Saturday, March 5, 2005 , Senator Clay Shaw (R-FL) said that when the time comes, the government will have to “find” the money to redeem these unfunded liabilities. He wants it to sound like an Easter egg hunt where he and the rest of Congress will go to the Rose Garden, turn over every rock, look under every chair or bench, and stomp through flower beds until they “find” the money. Watch out, when they can’t find it they’re coming to your house.

Others will talk about how the “unfunded liabilities” will grow into many trillions by 2042 if we don’t do something to reform Social Security right now. The “trillions” vary by time and are lower if they’re talking about 2011 or some date earlier than 2042 or 2052 depending on which projection they’re using.

What these politicians are usually talking about here is the projected amount of surplus Social Security money they intend to steal over the same time period or, if Bush gets his “personal accounts” plan, the amount they will have to borrow to make up for the loot they may be denied in their annual budget binges.

The same thing applies to the "transitional trillions" they often talk about. Something that proves how bogus Bush's plan is because the costs of setting up a real trust are negligible as they all know from experience with their own Thrift Savings Plan.

On top of this, they’re usually talking about how disastrous things are going to be if changes are not made to today’s financing – meaning Social Security will be in big trouble if something isn’t done about today’s rate of tax or method of financing the supplemental retirement program. Such arguments are downright silly.

In its seventy years of existence, Social Security has changed the tax factors forty-nine times including the last five times under the George W. Bush administration. (See: Social Security history chart where every line is a payroll tax increase) So much for Bush's promise not to raise payroll taxes.

To say that the factors are not going to be adjusted to actuarial conditions, rising costs of living and income, changes in life expectancy, and the other things that the statisticians of any highly efficient insurance company will deal with in the next 37 years is not only childishly ridiculous, it’s insane.

We already know what’s going to happen the day Social Security must turn to its trust fund. We’ve heard it right from the horse’s mouth in statements key players have made when they were being honest or when not in front of the public.

Maybe it’s just a form of arrogance like the way Bush intends to convince salted audiences of picked and pickled people in the next few months of talking in an echo chamber as Newsweek resently describes his last swing through the country’s grass roots in an article called "Tricks of the Trade." But he’ll soon be on television every day lecturing in his one-way direction to people who aren’t working and he’ll be presenting the new Karl Rove strategy.

I can hardly wait for these coming "weapons of mass society" scare tactics. Fear mongering that will, no doubt, begin with phrases like "everyone agrees..." or "everyone admits that..." or something to the same affect.

Unless people like to stack up form-letter returns from their representatives, most are limited to the things they see and hear on television. Often interviews where the subject of “unfunded liabilities” frequently comes up in a setting where the professional TV personality conducting the interview isn’t listening, has a list of questions that his or her staff prepared ahead of time, and is just waiting for the guest to take a breather so the next question can be asked before they’re interrupted by commercials. And usually the next question changes the subject.

In other words, there’s no “depth” or “probing” in these interviews conducted by people who themselves are trained to talk more than listen and are hand picked for what the social-psychologist Irving Goffman would call “presentation of self.” As such, they’re almost the brothers of elected politicians and certainly not people anyone should really believe are asking “hard” questions. We would all be better off with Ophrah Winfrey conducting political interviews. She’s the only one I’ve seen who seems to be capable of focus and drawing out a guest.

On the same day Senator Shaw was interviewed by CNN, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared on ABC putting out the old idea that “we must stop raiding the Social Security trust fund” as though there was something there to raid. I was surprised she didn’t talk about “lock boxes.”

It seems like ages that the Beltway Bandits have been talking about "raiding" a trust fund with nothing in it but debt or trying to curb their borrowholic affliction with "lock-boxes" that would do what a trust fund is supposed to do. (See: Confessions from the nineties)

It just goes on and on, day after day now, so long as Social Security is the hot topic. And it will go back and forth without ever addressing the main issue – dedicated payroll taxes that are malappropriated, being wasted, and will continue to be wasted on other spending, mostly military aggression.