Former President Clinton, former heads of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Government Accounting Office (GAO), and one economist after another have all told us that if the government must ever turn to any of these phony trust funds for operating cash the poor dears in Washington would be faced with the tough decision to either (1) raise taxes (2) borrow enormous sums from the public (3) cut discretionary spending or benefits, or any combination thereof.

These are the normal options, the standard revenue procedures of government, whether there is a trust fund or not.

In other words, the trust funds are meaningless to the general tax-paying public. It would not harm us one iota if they were struck from the books tomorrow. We could cut the national debt 42 percent by eliminating them. They compose the entire "Intragovernmental Holdings" portion of the national debt.

It is also worth mentioning that when President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore said that they were "reducing the national debt" and when President George W. Bush promised to reduce "available" debt—they were talking only about the other side of our horrendous debt. They were talking only and specifically about legitimate borrowing, under contract, under constitutionally authorized borrowing from the public. In their backhanded way, they were admitting that the "Intragovernmental" portion of the debt is illegitimate and meaningless. Fraudulent.

In fact, you can safely assume that if they had been able to continue "reducing available debt" until it was almost gone, the government would have eliminated the bogus Intragovernmental side of the debt on its own. Some future President would take to the airwaves, apologize for the ways of his predecessors, and tell us how he's doing us the great favor of getting rid of these fraudulent accounts.

President Clinton's debt reducing operation was never anything more than a Marc Rich style debt laundering operation to begin with. It used our surplus retirement and other surplus entitlement money to reduce the legitimate side of the national debt.

President Bush, under the direction of Alan Greenspan, tried to continue this debt laundering operation, at least until 9/11 came along.

So how have we acquired the "special obligation nonmarketable bonds" that make up the entire Intragovernmental Holdings side of the national debt?

In a nutshell, we got them when the federal government stole our retirement and other surplus entitlement money and pretended to merely "borrow" it—theft that continues daily and makes Enron, WorldCom, and other private sector crooks look like children at play. We would be better off if they just took the money and ran.

To maintain the pretense of borrowing, the federal government deposits these special obligation nonmarketable Treasury bonds, specifically developed for the occasion, in debit black hole debt accounts that they deliberately mislabel as "trust funds." They expect us to believe that they can both spend and save the same money.

To further the pretense of "borrowing," the Beltway Bandits then commit the even more heinous crime of adding annual interest to these accounts by simply handing the accounts more bogus bonds, no money involved, but increasing taxpayer indebtedness.

The perks they've set up for themselves under the 125 accounts that make up only seven percent of Intragovernmental Holdings are established by simply naming a bogus trust fund, depositing some nonmarketable bonds in it, and then drawing cash from the Treasury's general fund as needed. Oh, don't forget that these accounts draw annual interest too.

Besides the obvious, these accounts also provide a convenience that would not be available if these items were included in annual budgets. As a not-for-profit organization, required to bring its books to a zero balance by the end of the fiscal year, one of the only ways to carry accounts from one fiscal year to another is through a trust fund. By simply naming these accounts "trust funds," the pirates have a continuing way of providing health care, insurance, gift accounts, and so forth, for themselves and their cronies.

Don't you wish you could do this at your bank?