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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (111544)	2/19/2008 2:02:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Its true that the total national debt did go up in those years, but as much as I am not a Clinton fan, I'm not sure I would count debt to oneself as real debt. There is one federal government, if the rest of the government owes the Social Security Administration money, there really is no net debt because the SSA isn't a separate entity from the rest of the government. By the same token, just as the debt to the SSA isn't real debt, the assets held by the SSA aren't real assets for the government. Or you could say they are assets exactly equaled by the equivalent debt, the point is the government owned debt and the trust fund cancel each other out, providing no net asset or debt. (Of course there is a real net debt from the the bonds that aren't owned by the federal government)