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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (42302)	3/22/2010 7:04:58 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The point is that the program adds a lot of federal spending. Its not really "paid for" it will increase the tax burden, but that's been called "paid for", so going with the usage, its "paid for" only because of a significant tax increase. And even that's very questionable. More likely it will increase the deficit as well as increasing goverment spending. Table 1, page 6 of the report, footnote C below the table clearly states that NO SOCIAL SECURITY REVENUES are included in any of the $53 billion in off-budget savings. It doesn't actually say that. It says the treasury has to reimburse the SSA for the money that comes from the Social Security taxes. That note (if it accurately reflects the real bill) just amounts to a mandatory shuffling around of cash between government funds, to no real point. If the treasury hands the money over to the SSA, than the treasury has more need to borrow, and the SSA has more funds to lend, so the SSA then lends the money back to the treasury. This loan is a loan from the government to itself, so its about as meaningful as if I take a $20bil from my right pocket, put it in my left, put an IOU for $20 in my right pocket, spend the money, and claim the IOU is a real asset.