FEDERAL BUDGET "SURPLUS"
-- SMOKE & MIRRORS
John McMillen -- January 30, 1999
"There you go again...", a line made famous by an earlier President, bears repeating. Elected officials should be required to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And then someone should explain to all of them the meaning of the word "TRUTH"!
We keep hearing from President Clinton (and others) about their noble plans for dealing with our budget "surplus". If politicians spoke "TRUTH", we would hear that there is no surplus. A glance at our National Debt would confirm that the last year our debt actually decreased was 1969. A 3.1% increase in the debt is estimated for 2000. See the bottom of this editorial for a list of the national debt by year with percentage of annual increase shown.
Some would argue it is reasonable to see increases in the debt because we are not seeing the increase in federal assets (much as an individual will see an increase in his debts when he buys a home and incurs a mortgage), but it also may be argued that the "assets" of the government are fiction, since they do not produce goods and services or provide shelter for taxpayers, but merely require more tax money to support. Every time we build another federal office building, it requires additional people to fill it, and they are an additional burden to taxpayers.
Another factor totally ignored by those shouting about our "surplus" is the woeful under-funding of federal "insurance" programs. A vivid example of such under-funding was the savings and loan debacle! Remember when we taxpayers were called on to cough up billions to cover the losses caused by the government making promises to cover losses without requiring sufficient premiums to be paid by savings and loan companies. Then the government neglected its duty to monitor the companies' operations sufficiently to prevent the huge defaults (caused in part by sham transactions such as one in which our own president was a party to).
Also, Social Security has a huge future responsibility to our citizens. Every company with a defined benefit pension plan is required to make regular deposits to cover FUTURE payments, not just the payments currently being made to its retired employees. Any such plan which has been in existence for over 50 years would have a trust fund of 50 to 100 times the annual payments being made currently. For 1999, according to a report by the Social Security Administration, the payments are to be $342.6 BILLION, while the "trust fund" will be just $772.0 BILLION. Thus, it is clear that considering the actuarial liability of only the Social Security program (ignoring all the other under-funded "insurance" programs of our government), our true national debt is not the nearly 6 trillion dollars listed below, but actually almost 4 times that amount!!!
Don't you think it is about time to demand our government reduce its spending and start reducing the financial burden it forces us all to carry?
SUMMARY OF THE FEDERAL DEBT BY YEAR
YEAR FEDERAL DEBT INCREASE %INCREASE
1951 255,288 -1,565 -0.61%
1952 259,097 3,809 1.49%
1953 265,963 6,866 2.65%
1954 270,812 4,849 1.82%
1955 274,366 3,554 1.31%
1956 272,693 -1,673 -0.61%
1957 272,252 -441 -0.16%
1958 279,666 7,414 2.72%
1959 287,465 7,799 2.79%
1960 290,525 3,060 1.06%
1961 292,648 2,123 0.73%
1962 302,928 10,280 3.51%
1963 310,324 7,396 2.44%
1964 316,059 5,735 1.85%
1965 322,318 6,259 1.98%
1966 328,498 6,180 1.92%
1967 340,445 11,947 3.64%
1968 368,685 28,240 8.30%
1969 365,769 -2,916 -0.79%
1970 380,921 15,152 4.14%
1971 408,176 27,255 7.16%
1972 435,936 27,760 6.80%
1973 466,291 30,355 6.96%
1974 483,893 17,602 3.77%
1975 541,925 58,032 11.99%
1976 628,970 87,045 16.06%
1977 706,398 77,428 12.31%
1978 776,602 70,204 9.94%
1979 829,470 52,868 6.81%
1980 909,050 79,580 9.59%
1981 994,845 85,795 9.44%
1982 1,137,345 142,500 14.32%
1983 1,371,710 234,365 20.61%
1984 1,564,657 192,947 14.07%
1985 1,817,521 252,864 16.16%
1986 2,120,629 303,108 16.68%
1987 2,346,125 225,496 10.63%
1988 2,601,307 255,182 10.88%
1989 2,868,039 266,732 10.25%
1990 3,206,564 338,525 11.80%
1991 3,598,498 391,934 12.22%
1992 4,002,136 403,638 11.22%
1993 4,351,416 349,280 8.73%
1994 4,643,705 292,289 6.72%
1995 4,921,018 277,313 5.97%
1996 5,181,934 260,916 5.30%
1997 5,369,707 187,773 3.62%
1998 5,543,589 173,882 3.24%
1999 5,738,119 194,530 3.51%
2000 5,915,719 177,600 3.10%
2001 6,078,886 163,167 2.76%
2002 6,203,701 124,815 2.05%
2003 6,336,234 132,533 2.14% |
