While the elderly give up meals and medicine to pay heating bills this winter, and everybody turns the heat down, the Beltway Bandits are gloating over trillions in extra money they expect in the near future. Windfall billions that they can dive in and play with like Scrooge McDuck.

While people are being laid off, forced into early retirement, taking jobs that pay less, watching companies move off to Mexico—the “feels good” politicians and their media lackeys are telling us everything’s fine. Why worry? The government is loaded. What could be more normal?

The stock market is just leveling off. We have no inflation. Energy costs are just a passing phenomena making up for global warming. It’ll all come back in the fall. That ten dollar hamburger is just because of the atmosphere you buy. Sales are down. You aren’t spending enough. You probably have everything you need already. Talk about $3.00 a gallon at the gas pumps this summer is just a rumor. Don’t worry. Be happy. Look at us. We never had it so good.

With 141 million working stiffs paying income and payroll taxes far beyond what the government needs, the fat cats are set to enjoy even more surplus this year. They’re arguing about how to use it. An argument that may take forever.

Of the wonderful $237 billion bonus given our representative government last year, $150 billion came from entitlements, $94.4 billion from Social Security alone. The other $65 billion came from Medicare overpayments, gas taxes, and dozens of other entitlements. Money that’s not supposed to be used anywhere except for the purpose it was collected. That’s what entitlement means. You paid for it, you’re entitled to it. The balance of $87 billion came from extra income tax.

The wealthy might pay most of the income tax, but Social Security and Medicare are taxes on the working class. Capped at $72,200 they are a big-time tax on the majority of Americans. All of the workers.

Averaging it out, last year each of the nation’s workers paid $1,063.83 in extra payroll taxes that were not necessary. Of course, that’s an average. Some paid more, some less depending on salaries, but we’re all in there somewhere.

So what if Social Security didn’t need it? So what if the supplemental retirement system is getting bigger and bigger profits every year? Everybody’s still getting their checks right on time aren’t they? So they raised the retirement age to 67 to bring in a little more loot? They raised the cut off cap too. What’s wrong with that? They’re going to raise it all even further. Exercise is good for old people. They can still work, set up cottage industries at home, and contribute to the overall good. Look at John Glenn going back into space and the President’s father skydiving. Get out there and do your part. Early retirement is just a breather, a recess break, a chance for redirection.

You don’t hear the federal government talking about cutting entitlement taxes, do you? Of course not. They won’t even get rid of the extra four cents they put on gasoline in 1998. Added just because the Department of Transportation started to cash-in some of its trust fund bonds in order to repair Interstate Highways.

Politicians hate it, in fact they go ballistic, whenever an entitlement wants to cash-in any of those funny money “special obligation” Treasury bonds in trust funds. It means that real money must be taken out of the annual General Fund. Money they’ve already planned to spend elsewhere, often on their buddies, their heavy contributors. You can’t win an election on your looks and promises you know.

Mad as hell when Medicare asked for a paltry $3 billion out of its trust fund in 1997, the politicians started accusing the health system of going under, in trouble, needing reform. Mismanaged, even though unscrupulous doctors had been double billing to the tune of about $23 billion. Even though Medicare had more than $206 billion in trust. Money that could have been used for prescription drugs, but wasn’t.

The same thing happened back in 1983 when Social Security drew on its trust fund for several years in a row. Unemployment had reached 25 percent in some parts of the country. Fewer were feeding into the pay-as-you-go system. My God, they better fix that.

On the advice of the Greenspan Commission, it took Congress and the Reagan Administration less than a month to raise payroll taxes to 15.3 percent of every working person’s payroll—12.4 percent for Social Security, 2.9 percent for Medicare. And even though the recession was over by then.

Many American workers pay more in FICA taxes (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) than they do in income tax. But that’s OK, it’ll provide them with walking money in their golden years. Keep them out of the poor house. Off the dole.

No sense setting up a real savings systems like the Thrift Saving Plan for federal employees. A privatized investment scheme that uses tax dollars to invest in the Standard & Poors index of the New York Stock Exchange, and handled by Barclay Bank of Great Britain. With matching funds thrown in to the tune of 40 percent of anything up to ten percent of employee salary invested.

Hey, federal employees have only been making an average 28 percent return on their investment here. What would the working stiffs of America do with such a plan? What would they do with all that extra money, just waste it on toys?

And federal employees chip in to Social Security too. Under FERS, the Federal Employees Retirement System that replaced Civil Service Retirement, the matching funds paid by their employer aren’t dollar-for-dollar. Oh no, the feds are given up to eight-to-one in matching taxpayer dollars. Even some of your local governments have adopted this pension system of putting your tax dollars to work.

But why worry? President Bush is promising a break in income taxes, right? It was part of his platform in the elections. He’s promising to push for $1.6 trillion in tax breaks over the next ten years or so. That’s a good part of the expected income tax surplus, but certainly not all of the overcharge.

The Democrats don’t want to give up so much revenue. They want to cut the tax break in half. They claim it’s dangerous to give up so much of "their" cash, even though the government can raise money anytime it wants and for any emergency like war, pestilence or famine. Billions can be raised overnight. Instead, they want to keep this cash on hand where they can play with it.

The Democrats want to spread any income tax relief more towards those with smaller salaries on the idea that it’s better to distribute wealth. They will fight Bush’s plan tooth and nail, even though it already spreads the refund pretty well. Who knows what anyone will end up getting back, if anything.

Two of the leading Democrats, Tom Dashle and Dick Gephardt, recently put some young single mother on CNN to explain how many buses she takes to get her kids to school with hugs and kisses. Then, how many more buses she has to take to get herself to work. How the Bush tax cut will only gain her about $130 a year.

Of course, she failed to mention that on top of other breaks and incentives this probably cuts her tax in half. At least her income taxes, certainly not her payroll taxes.

And don’t forget, the pirates have that fantastic baby-boomer fairy tale to scare the pants off you. To make you believe that Social Security is about to fall on its face and not recover unless you send more money.

Oh well, they’re your representatives. You elected them. They work for you. So, just sit back and take it. Watch television if you can afford the electricity.

And don’t forget, war is good for the economy. Note the reappearance of “weapons of mass destruction.”

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