Think of all the cars, homes, boats, dinners, clothes, medical bills, and other things this money could have purchased. Even if people applied their share to credit card debt, it would have reduced payments and still allowed increased spending.

And where does this money come from? It's the amount you were overtaxed in payroll taxes during fiscal 2002. It's the amount of your retirement and health care money that the government stole and spent elsewhere—$88.9 billion from Social Security overcharges and $15.97 billion from Medicare overcharges.

What's more, there are at least 15 other entitlements that produced another $44 billion in overcharges for a grand total of $149 billion in overcharges for the government to enjoy. Yes Jane, surpluses are not gone. They're simply not mentioned anymore. Entitlement surpluses always accounted for the major portion of any surplus this country ever had.

Oh, the Beltway Bandits pretend to "borrow" this money, but that's a flagrant lie. Once the money is spent it's gone forever, never to be seen again. You can't both spend and save the same money. It's an impossibility.

But to carry out the fiction of borrowing the Beltway Bandits deposit "special obligation" nonmarketable Treasury bonds in phony trust funds dollar-for-dollar for money taken while telling you that these bogus bonds are going to extend the life of the Social Security system to at least 2041. It's all a con game. A swindle.

If and when these bonds, which now constitute 42 percent of the national debt, must be redeemed guess where the money will come from. Why, lo and behold, it will come from taxpayers in a form of double taxation with interest added. In fact, we are buying debt with our extra payments to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements.

It's the same as walking into the U.S. Treasury, plunking down money, and saying: "Here, give me some debt and I'll pay you back later." It's that ludicrous.

And this goes on year after year to the tune of somewhere between $140 billion and $200 billion a year.

At any time, George W. Bush could have cut payroll taxes and reduced other entitlement taxes like the gas tax. But he didn't. Just as he has taken back money budgeted for education, Dubya could care less about middle class America, the workers, the backbone of the country.

Instead, he's playing the same sort of trickle-down voodoo economics that his father played. Tax cuts for the wealthy that may or may not even spend their money in the United States.

And now the propagenda spinmeisters like Rush Limbaugh are trying to convince people that entitlements are a form of welfare. Like the Starbucks ad that says: "Success is not an entitlement. It must be earned" they would like you to believe that the supplemental retirement system depends on the good graces of government, that it's a dole.

Get this straight. Entitlements are payments you made for goods and services that you are "entitled" to receive. That money is not supposed to be spent elsewhere. If you do not receive those goods and services, or if you have to pay for them a second time, there is something very fraudulent and criminal going on.

Try telling 40 million retired workers that after paying up to 15.3 percent of their employment for years they are not entitled to the money they're receiving.

How long are the people going to put up with this crap from a bunch of thugs hell bent on taking over the world?