Remember the Popeye movie? You pay a “tie up me dinghy tax, a walkin’ on the dock tax, a carry me bags tax and a smokin’ me pipe tax.” And what do you get for all of these taxes? You get Bluto and Wimpy, maybe “Olive Erl” too.

To account for this stolen money (they claim to borrow it) the government then gives you notes that say you will have to pay the same amounts again someday, plus interest. They put these notes in a debit account with the misnomer "trust fund." It's all part of the “Pay-It-Again, Sam” plan.

Bluto says that the more of these notes you pile up for you and your kids to pay, the more debt you incur, the stronger you are making Social Security.

Supposing you went to the supermarket and bought $127.83 worth of groceries, paying with a check or cash. The supermarket promises to deliver these groceries to your home, like the old days.

When you’re at home and the groceries don’t arrive, you call the store. Bill, the manager, tells you that you owe the supermarket $127.83, plus interest. Interest that will grow the longer you take to pay off your debt, but it has really done a lot to strengthen your credit.

You tell him that you already paid and have the receipt to prove it. Thinking of a stop order, you call the bank to see if your checking account has been debited. It has.

When you call the super back, Al, the assistant manger, tells you that they already spent your money. They needed it to fix the delivery truck, run an ad against the competitive store down the street and pay down a debt of their own. You’ll have to come up with the money if you want the groceries.

How would you like that? Wouldn’t you blow your stack? So, why aren’t you? That’s exactly what your federal government is doing to you. Is it only because of the time lag that you don’t see what’s happening? Or is it that you don't hear anything on the news or from neighbors about rip-offs like this and you don't want to make a fuss?

To some of you, that $127.83 was just a drop in the bucket. So, what the hell. If it keeps Bill and Al off your back, it's worth it.

To others, it might be the difference between eating or buying prescription drugs. The difference between dinner or taking your kids to the doctor.

While most of us fall somewhere in-between, Bill and Al don't care. They take this money from everybody. No discrimination. How many prescriptions would the $232 billion they've already taken from Medicare have bought? How much more will raising the minimum wage give them? They want more, they just raise their prices at the supermarket.

Just what do you think nonmarketable Treasury bonds are anyway? They can’t be traded anywhere. Nobody else wants them. These are the “special obligation” notes your federal government puts in a debit account that they call a “trust fund” after they steal your extra entitlement money. And then they tell you that they are “strengthening” the account. Making Social Security stronger because there are more and more of these notes piling up every day. Notes that you, your children or grandchildren will have to pay off someday.

Even President Clinton admits that these bonds are worthless except to double-bill you under the Pay-It-Again, Sam plan. In his own year 2000 budget proposal, under Analytical Perspectives, page 337, he said: “trust fund bonds are not real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.” There you have it, right from the horse's mouth. The second payment is going to come from future taxes that you or your children will pay in one way or another.

We all know what “raising taxes” means, don’t we? The only question here is whether he’s talking about raising your income or your FICA taxes.

And “borrowing from the public” means nothing more than putting it on the national debt credit card so you can pay later.

Reducing “benefits or other expenditures” is nothing more than cutting back on discretionary spending. Taking away services you should be getting in defense, education, agriculture or other normal spending areas. If we truly need those services, taxes will have to be raised to provide them.

What it all boils down to is this:

• Every working American pays 2 of the 12.4 points of FICA taxes in excess—16 percent of your FICA taxes are not presently needed by Social Security or Medicare because they have enough to meet their obligations. Instead of investing this extra money wisely, the fat cats take this money, and you get nothing for it. At least, not what you're supposed to get. It's the same money Democrats now try to tell you Social Security cannot do without. That if you don't keep it coming Social Security will fold. And they use the fictitious baby-boomer story to scare you into believing them.
  
  
• Two percent of the wages from 141 million working Americans, plus extra gas taxes, harbor taxes and other user taxes are enough to pay off a good part of the national debt in a short period of time. Remember, Social Security and Medicare excesses account for less than half of the notes in trust funds.
  
  
• The Democrats want this annual extra money to pay down what they define as the “public” side of the national debt. Give them $100 billion, and they’ll give you a $7 billion rebate—cash in hand. It comes from savings on interest payments they would otherwise have to make to investors they’ve borrowed from.
  
  
• You or your children are also going to pay the other side of this national debt someday. Just because they’ve labeled it “Federal Debt” doesn’t mean that they are going to come up with the cash out of their own pockets. Something they couldn’t do even if they were all John D. Rockefeller clones.

Clinton and Gore will tell you that they made payments against the national debt last year, but it actually rose $130 billion. That’s because what they’re doing is a plain and simple money laundering operation. Something you and I would go to the slammer for even trying. And they brag about it.

Once they’ve paid off the blue section, once they’ve used your Social Security and Medicare payments to make the bar all red, then they'll tell you that the red section was just a joke anyway. Nonmarketable bonds aren’t legal and should be eliminated. This end game is the only objective that makes any sense.

How long are you going to continue shopping at this supermarket???