The last monthly report from the US Treasury put the Unemployment Trust Fund at $89.896 billion (EIGHTY-NINE BILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINETY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS) as of July 31 (table #8) with two months to go in the government's fiscal year ending September 30, 2001.

$5.94 billion of this total came from interest paid against the balance the Unemployment Trust Fund held at the close of fiscal 2000. Interest paid by simply handing the trust more bonds, no cash involved.

Of course, this is all debt in the form of "special obligation" nonmarketable bonds deposited after your government spent the money elsewhere. It's in exactly the same position as the Social Security Trust Fund you've been hearing so much about lately. There's just not as much money involved.

So what happens when we have thousands more laid off people drawing unemployment? Where does the government get the money?

It comes from the Treasury's General Fund of income tax receipts, of course. With all entitlement surplus money going towards the national debt, there is no other place to get it.

Well, there is one other place but it's disappearing fast because we're close to the end of the fiscal year. With some $460 million a day, weekends included, coming in from all entitlements included, the government could steal some of that new cash instead of putting it towards the debt.

This is what the dips call "dipping" into Social Security's and Medicare's trust funds. Trust funds that never hold real money, only debt. The General Fund holds all cash until it's spent. What is not spent by the close of the fiscal year goes automatically towards liabilities outstanding; i.e., the national debt. And the books are brought to zero.

During the month of July alone, the government withdrew $1.726 billion from the General Fund in order to pay unemployment insurance to laid off people who qualify.

And this means that the general taxpaying public pays the same money that was once paid by employers under unemployment tax requirements. Employers paid the first time. The government spent that money. Now, the public pays the same money for a second bit of taxation and goes without or sacrifices something else that money would have provided like education, defense, and so forth. It's double taxation plain and simple. Another instance of the Pay-It-Again, Sam scam.

This is happening right now as you read this. It's not in the distant future the way Social Security's false problem is portrayed.

The same thing happened in 1997 when Medicare had to turn to its trust fund for $3 billion before Congress and the Administration found that unscrupulous doctors had been double billing Medicare to the tune of some $23 billion. The Medicare Trust Funds now stand at $243 billion as of July 31, 2001 and politicians are still talking about Medicare being "in trouble."

It happened in 1998 when the Department of Transportation cashed-in $5 billion from their Highway Trust Fund in order to fund Interstate Highway improvements. Before the government added four cents to your taxes at the gas pump and took care of the problem in the same way they took care of Social Security in 1983 when they increased payroll taxes way beyond what was necessary. The Highway Trust Fund stands at $26.173 billion as of July 31st with two months to go, and will exceed its $32 billion held at the close of fiscal 2000.

The government and its loyal news people portray Social Security as responsible for the entire surplus. The second largest surplus in American history. All you have to do is realize that about 40 percent of the figure they quote, whatever that figure happens to be, comes from interest they are deliberately ignoring.

They do this because they do not want you to realize how many other entitlements they are plundering with equal abandon. (see: Trust Fund Table)

How long are you going to put up with this outright theft and accompanying malarky???