Post debate coverage has dealt deeply and in detail with Al Gore’s lies and exaggerations. He has even been typified as a compulsive liar, worse than Clinton, who can’t help himself. People have checked out Gore’s claims of everything from drugs for his dog to his front line service walking through sawgrass and being shot at in Viet Nam and it has all turned out to be untrue. But no one has mentioned his biggest lie of all.
The federal government’s fiscal year ended on September 30th, before some of the debates took place. And a few days later, the Treasury’s “Bureau of Public Debt to the penny” reported that, in fiscal 2000, the national debt went up. Not down, as Gore has been telling everyone, but up $18 billion. Have you got that? The federal government’s own Treasury reports that the public debt rose in fiscal 2000, while Al Gore tells everyone that he’s been paying it down. It’s now close to $5.7 trillion. This is not “fuzzy math.”
Where is the media on this subject? Why aren’t Gore’s critics pointing out this particular lie? And why, especially, isn’t George W. challenging Gore on this point? Could it be that they are all in cahoots? Or is it simply that they are all afraid of cold hard numbers?
Another subject that’s not covered by anyone is the so-called “surplus.” Where did it come from and of what is it composed? If anyone bothered to look into this, they would find that there are only two major sources of revenue involved. One is possible income tax surplus, including corporate taxes. And the other is entitlement excess, including overpayments to Social Security, Medicare, road and airport maintenance and dozens of other entitlements. The latter representing money that is not supposed to be spent for any purpose other than the reason it was collected.
In fiscal 2000, the amount stolen from funds Social Security did not require in order to meet its obligations was more than $80 billion. The amount stolen from Medicare was more than 20 billion—how many prescription drugs would that have bought? That’s a grand total of more than $100 billion stolen from FICA tax overpayments alone, and not counting excess gas taxes, harbor taxes, airport and airways taxes or the many other entitlements contributing to the government’s extortion and fraud coffers. Where is George W. on this subject? Are both he and his handlers too dumb to open up this can of worms? Couldn’t his father help him out here? He knows the inside story.
Well, it’s too late to openly challenge any of these questions now, isn’t it? The so-called debates are over. Now, we’re left with candidates beating the bushes to speak to audiences salted with paid flag-wavers and slogan card-bearing fanatics. Pep rallies. All to be replayed by the establishment media to people sick of the subject and turning to the World Series or movie rentals. We all recognize canned laughter and staged productions when we hear them again and again, so why bother tuning in?
But now that he’s got captive audiences all to himself once more, Al Gore is turning to the neglected subject of Social Security and changing colors depending on which way the wind blows. Now he’s starting to show his true self once again. With no one to challenge him, Al is really flying.
In Florida, to groups of oldsters already retired, Al preaches the idea that Bush’s plan would jeopardize Social Security’s ability to meet its current commitments. That taking money for personal accounts would be dangerous. Of course, he doesn’t mention that this is the same “surplus” that he’s been stealing for the past eight years.
To groups of younger people anywhere, Al promises that his plan delivers a better return on their money than the Bush plan. Even telling people that it doesn’t come from current payments to Social Security or Medicare. Since Bush got a big kick in the polls from the younger people (those who don't believe Social Security will be there for them) Al has suddenly come up with his own rebate and investment plan. And who’s challenging the “fuzzy math” involved? Everyone knows that before Al flunked out of divinity school, he learned to change water into money.
Most importantly of all, what is George W. saying about Social Security? He’s out stumping the hinterlands too. But you don’t hear Bush getting into the government’s theft of your entitlement money, do you? He’s been strangely silent on that subject all along. He doesn’t even challenge where the “surplus” comes from or the legality of keeping it and using it for any purpose other than that for which it was collected. Could it be that George W. is another crook in sheep's clothing?
My wife tells me that she thinks she heard George W. say something about the government’s own Thrift Savings Plan. A plan where federal employees enjoy privatized investment of retirement money in the stock market through Barclay Bank of Great Britain. A system that has generated an average annual return of 28 percent over the past four or five years. She even thinks that Bush said if investing retirement money in the stock market was good enough for two million federal government employees it ought to be good for everybody else. But I didn’t hear this, did you? And if he did finally say it, why is it coming out now? Isn’t it a little late?