and the second half didn't have a lot of bearing on the first half.
False.
"The US government has no contractual obligations"
has a totally different meaning than
"The US government has no contractual obligations, and no legal debt owed under the entitlement programs"
The "no legal debt" part could have reasonably been skipped (replaced with ...) but the "under the entitlement programs" part can't be dropped with out seriously changing the meaning of the statement.
The statement you quoted, implies that the US has no debt, and no contracts that it has to pay.
Add under the entitlement programs, and its about the entitlement payments not being a debt or contractual obligation. What you quoted was false, the actual statement was true (or every close to true, the SSA does put out contracts for things, and it has to pay out the money it owes under the contracts, the same goes for Medicare, and Medicaid, but the SSA, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits, which are the vast majority of the programs' spending, are not contractual obligations or debts.
The government took SSI contributions with the promise to pay. They have it in the budget. So what was it then?
Government spending. Like any other spending, except for the fact that it doesn't have to be reauthorized each year. |
