Faced with a debt ceiling they set for themselves, a limit that gave them time to go on the wagon, the borrowholics of Washington are about to go on another binge.

On March 13, 2002, the Congressional Quarterly told us that the Bush budget for fiscal 2003 calls for a deficit of $45.6 billion and that $224.3 billion in surplus Social Security payments will be used to pay for other programs.

On the same day, the New York Times told us that "the Republicans' own figures show the government using $850.5 billion of Social Security receipts for general government operations over the next five years."

And all this after the President himself promised not to touch Social Security money for anything but emergencies like war or paying down "available" national debt. A war that's only costing us a billion a month, twelve billion a year, that even with other expenses like homeland security, aid to those effected by 9/11, and bailouts that are costing even more, doesn't begin to add up to these plans to rob Social Security further.

The so-called Social Security Trust Fund now stands at $1.22 trillion because of this habit of drinking down our retirement and health care money as fast as it's available. That's 20.7 percent of the national debt all by itself, and there are 19 other trust funds consumed with equal abandon that together with Social Security add up to 38 percent of the national debt.

All of this borrowing/theft is because politicians do not have the guts to raise income taxes, particularly with elections every two years. Our own system encourages dishonesty.

Right now, today, the borrowholics are faced with raising their artificial promise to go on the wagon. At meetings of borrowholics anonymous, some congressmen have already stepped on stage to say things like: Hello, my name is Christopher Cox, and I'm a borrowholic with a plan to change our drinking habits. We just won't do it where the public can see us anymore. We can change the name of our drinking spots to "not subject to debt limit" and go on our merry way. Other members like Alan Greenspeak cheer him on and come out with fantastic confessions like "in my judgment, it never served any useful purpose to call them Intragovernmental Holdings anyway."

Others are arguing to change the name of their drinks from nonmarketable to marketable and lump Social Security debt in with honestly contracted Debt Held by the Public. After all, it's taxpayer money that pays for it all anyway no matter what it's called.

Without going into "why" the borrowholics do what they do, we can just touch lightly on one of their common excuses. Being lawyers themselves, our borrowholic lawmakers have great faith and respect in bars and the law.

Like the woman who drowned her five children, then claimed that the devil made her do it, our lawmakers have a similar excuse. Whenever they drink our retirement and health care money they claim that the law made them do it.

The law they're talking about is the 1935 law that took the Supreme Court two years to decide that it was OK to level payroll taxes on workers. It's only two sentences and reads as follows:

"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to invest such portion of the amounts credited to the Account as is not, in his judgment, required to meet current withdrawals. Such investment may be made only in interest-bearing obligations of the United States or in obligations guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the United States."

Now, Treasury securities certainly are "interest-bearing obligations of the United States" aren't they? Setting aside the use of the word "may" for a moment, you certainly wouldn't blame the borrowholics for interpreting this to mean solely Treasury securities. Yet, if that were the case, then why doesn't the law say "only in Treasury securities?" The lawmakers of 1935 certainly knew what those were didn't they?

Let's give borrowholics the benefit of doubt on this first point, even though one of the duties of our lawmakers is to modify, clarify, and get rid of unfair laws.

The second part of the last sentence, the part after use of the word "or," gives them another choice does it not? And that investment choice could be anything, including cornering the market on bubble gum, as long as the investment is "guaranteed as to both principal and interest" by the people (the United States). In other words, we could "guarantee" investments just like the FDIC guarantees bank deposits. You do remember the S&L fiasco don't you? It cost taxpayers over $400 billion.

In the worst case scenario, this would mean that if America's workers lost part of their investment to sharpies like Enron, then we would make it up out of future tax dollars. We certainly wouldn't be any worse off than the "guarantee" of going 130 percent or more in the hole as we are now with the borrowholic's double-billing us for extra taxes paid, plus interest.

Instead of rewriting the definition of the national debt, the borrowholic lawmakers could rewrite this law to read "investment in anything but Treasury securities" since those are all backed by the same people providing the initial surplus.

Let's turn to another law that you seldom hear anything about. This is the one with the tax break built in, which is why you don't hear much about it.

The CATO Institute cites this law in their arguments to privatize Social Security. It's a Supreme Court ruling from 1960 in the matter of Flemming v Nestor.

It's actually a civil rights case from the days of McArthy's communist witch-hunts. Under the Eisenhower administration, Arthur Flemming was the Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare that handled Social Security at the time. Ephram Nestor was a Bulgarian who worked in the United States from 1913 to 1955 when he retired drawing $55.60 a month from Social Security. In 1956 he was deported for being a member of the communist party for six years during the Great Depression years of the Thirties.

Returning to Bulgaria, Nestor sued for Social Security benefits that had been denied him for having once been a communist. He won in the lower courts, but in 1960 the Supreme Court overturned that decision in rulings that said Social Security payments are not guaranteed as property rights and should be treated much like personal income taxes.

Dissenting opinions by this court have become much of the basis for legislation to guarantee payroll taxes as real property and for the privatization of Social Security in whole or in part.

However, this same Supreme Court ruling would also seems to open the door for today's workers to claim their payroll tax contributions as "prepaid income tax" and deduct it from their tax returns. Perhaps even the entire 15.3 percent including that half paid by their employers. If questioned, you can always cite the Supreme Court decision.

If you want to try this with the Internal Revenue Service, don't tell them you got the idea from me.