"OFF BUDGET" by Ed Henry
		..........In grade school, I was pushed ahead a year. It wasn't because I was smart enough to be a year ahead of my age group. It was because my sister, Dolores, was only 13 months younger than me and we had both been to so many pre-school lock-ups that the nuns at St. Peters didn't want to put us both through kindergarten again and, for some reason, they didn't want us both in the same classroom. Anyway, I was put in the first grade while she started in kindergarten. These were the depression years of the mid-thirties. ..........This put me in classrooms with kids who were for the most part about a year older than I was. It had an effect on me through high school. Not only was I competing in sports with children who had developed more muscle than I had, but also was not quite as worldly as they were. I still believed some of the fantasies typical of younger kids. In some things, I had a certain naiveté. ..........We sat in the same seat, in the same classroom all day except for lunch and two recesses, of course. Once, in the fourth grade and close to Christmas, the nun who taught us all things all day wanted to tell a joke. However, when she announced this, she prefaced it by saying: "before I tell you this joke, I should ask if any of you still believe in Santa Clause?" ..........I raised my hand. I was the only one who raised his hand. Everybody else laughed, snickered or got upset because now our teacher wouldn't tell us the joke. I was devastated. ..........That afternoon, while walking home, I didn't even feel like stopping at the little "green store" for some of those candy dots on a strip of paper. I was seriously upset, embarrassed and wanted to put it to my folks. Why hadn't they told me this fact of life? ..........When I confronted my Mexican mother in the kitchen, she just smothered me to her ample bosom and said something like; "Eduardo (a name my buddies instantly translated into "lardo"), we just wanted to make you happy. Here, I made you some cookies." Oh well, live and learn. ..........Actually, it wasn't so bad finding out that my father, who brought my mother and I up to Rockford from the far south was a pretty good guy and responsible for all those great holidays. Being a downtown landlord, he was home most of the time, my fishing and hunting instructor, and someone I could take revenge upon on the river hockey rink in our backyard. I could skate circles around him. ..........Disillusionment over Santa Claus is nothing compared to the later and greater lose of faith in our government. .......................................................................Epilogue ..........The reason I'm telling you all this is that it's much the same with concepts and words our body politic uses to describe things. Fairy tales they tell us in order to disguise things and make us happily complacent, right down to the cookies. ..........Take the words "off budget" and "surplus." Today, they mean the same thing. But you can only see this when you strip away the fairy tales and outright lies. ..........There will never be a real "surplus" until the federal government saves some of the money they get from us in the form of annual personal income and corporate taxes, plus some minor income from things like inheritance and duty taxes. When, some year, they do not spend all of the money paid from these normal or honest sources. That's a fact. ..........A real surplus isn't predicted to happen until the year 2002. Their own Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts this, and even then it depends upon their sticking to the elements of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act--- something very tenuous in light of what they consider "emergencies" that might pop up. ..........On top of that, the amount of surplus predicted for 2002 is a mere $5 billion. A drop in the bucket compared to the fairy tales you are currently being told. Haven't you heard Clinton say that he could pay off the national debt with the "surpluses" expected over the next ten years or so. That's almost $5.7 trillion. ..........When you hear talk of large "surpluses" nowadays, you are hearing about money stolen mostly from entitlements. ................................................................Dishonest money ..........Not too long ago, the catch phrase was "off budget" as opposed to "on budget" revenue. On budget, simply means money from personal income and corporate taxes. Money collected and dedicated to discretionary spending; i.e., to be allocated amongst things like agriculture, education, defense, health and the many normal functions of our government. Both the House and the Senate have committees that spend 12 months of every year deciding what the next year's allocations or "budget" will be. So far, they've spent almost 14 months on the year 2000 budget and still haven't reached agreement because they're trying not to steal Social Security's approximately $80 billion excess this year. Not steal it for the first time, I might add. ..........Off budget, on the other hand, has always been a fairy tale. It's a term used to describe money stolen mostly from entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and a host of other services you pay other taxes for, while making it sound like found money. By using the phrase "off budget" they would like you to believe that money simply appeared from some mysterious, complicated or highly sophisticated maneuverings the speaker doesn't have time to explain; i.e., the deep bowels of finance or from Santa Claus. ..........Politicians do not like to use the word entitlement because it means exactly what it says. It means that you paid for a service and you're supposed to get what you paid for—you're entitled to it. Even extra money, even contingency taxes collected over and above what's necessary to provide the service year after year, the slight cushion every normal business provides, is supposed to stay with the entitlement. It's not supposed to be borrowed or used somewhere else. ..........Because the federal government operates on a general fund system, with all cash staying in the general fund Treasury until spent, we've let this extra cushion money slide by for years. We've allowed Congress and the Administration to "borrow" this money with the idea that, after all, they spent it on things necessary to us and we would replace it ourselves when it comes to that. It becomes part of the national debt every time it's taken. A debt we all must someday repay. ..........That is, nobody minded too much as long as the sums taken as "off budget" revenue were relatively small and easily replaced from future income and corporate taxes, even increases in the entitlement taxes or slight diminution of services provided. ..........However, since 1983 and the Greenspan enlightenment, the federal government has learned how to turn these entitlement services into huge slush funds for their personal "off budget" desires. They learned to exploit and extort the hell out of this loophole with extra entitlement taxation. Social Security alone, the largest slush fund, now accounts for a total of about $850 billion in extra cash income, since about 1986 when it went into full effect, that Congress and the Administration blew on whatever they wanted. All due to raising FICA taxes to 12.4 and 15 percent for the self employed, at least two points beyond what was necessary. Add in the other entitlements, and we've got a grand total of more than $1.9 trillion stolen this way, 34 percent of the national debt that citizens are supposed to reimburse or pay back someday. ..........Bringing things to an even more ridiculous conclusion, the words "off budget" have been replaced by the words "surplus." Words that were once used to disguise the fact that Congress and the Administration were stealing this money are replaced by more honest words meant to accomplish the same thing while implying that the government has done something good. The new terms are more honest only because the entitlements really are collecting more money than they need and it really is a "surplus"—a surplus to steal. Now, instead of merely implying that the tooth fairy left this unnoticed windfall under their pillows, we're supposed to believe that the government has accomplished great savings. ..........It has become so outlandish that Clinton can now propose that we pile debt on top of debt by paying off the national debt with this same stolen money. All we have to do is take Social Security's, and every other entitlement's "surplus" and instead of spending it elsewhere we turn it over to elsewhere-land at national debt fairyland park. ..........In other words, if it were all Social Security's money we could take $5.7 trillion of it, pay off the national debt, and we would only be left with $5.7 trillion more in nonmarketable bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund. Is that not part of the national debt? (see: Laundering) ..........Are you beginning to see how insane it is, or should I go back to the fourth grade?