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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159799)	7/10/2001 10:54:18 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

So you want the SS trust fund invested in Federal T Bills?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159799)	7/10/2001 11:11:20 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Government securites that draw interest. When we use SS to pay off the debt, SS buys interest bearing government securities. And the tax cut wasn't 1.8 billion either. But yes, it is a legal debt owed by our government to our government. But the issue is not that SS is going bankrupt because of a tax cut. The issue is not that the government will renege on it's debt to itself. The issue is that at some point in time, inflows of cash will not be enough to match the outflows. That is when we need to sell assets to make up the diff. (i don't believe this will happen, but that is the scenario) Now, it is estimated that in 6 years all redeemable debt will be retired. I do not know the plans for after that on how much debt will be available. I think not much. In 10 years, we will have a huge cash balance with no debt. So the Fed is wanting to invest the surplus in foreign assets. Bush wants to cut taxes. But that is the non-SS surplus. I personally do not think that in 15 years there will be a shortfall in SS. But if there is a risk, I am willing to address it. But the problem is, everyone wants to pay off the debt. NOw in 15 years, do we start selling debt to pay off the SS IOU's, or take it out of cash. Assuming that there is a problem, I say sell more debt. O'Neil is being superb on this issue. He can't say we will sell more debt, the dems will kill him. He can't say lockbox (ie no interest), cause the repubs will kill him. Nice fine line. Democrats are either running around saying the man is crazy, or that the tax cut, which hasn't even kicked in yet, has already ruined SS. Anyway, I wasn't really planning on getting into the details. I will scurry around for a few minutes after posting this for some background links and post them later. I would take you more seriously if you would have stated the proper amount of the tax cut. Really shows bias to make it bigger than it really is.