The Congressional Budget Office, which has not adopted the administration's accounting device, is set to release a report on Aug. 28 that is expected to forecast that several billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund will in fact be spent.
Democrats, who warned the massive 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut proposed by the president and passed by Congress earlier this year would make an invasion of the trust fund inevitable, say the White House is using an accounting gimmick in an effort to mask its fiscal irresponsibility.
"They are stretching as much as they can contort themselves … so they're not exposing the degree that their fiscal policy is putting us in danger of [tapping] Medicare and Social Security trust funds," Gene Sperling, former Clinton economic adviser, said Thursday on a conference call with reporters arranged by the Democratic National Committee.
"What you see today, I think you could call 'Rose Mary Woods accounting,'" Sperling said, referring to the secretary for former President Nixon who claimed to have accidentally erased large sections of the Watergate tapes.
Next week's White House budget report will project a $160 billion budget surplus for the 2001 fiscal year, administration officials said.
"The budget the president proposed continues to be good news for the American people because it contains the second largest surplus in the history of the country even given the economic slowdown," Fleischer said.
But all but a few billion dollars of that surplus will be attributable to a surplus run by Social Security. In February, the White House had forecast a $125 billion non-Social Security surplus. |
