Truth - Al Franken [78]
That came as a surprise to the millions of working baby boomers who have been paying high payroll taxes from every paycheck in order to build up a reserve big enough to handle their retirement. As of 2004, according to the Social Security Trust Fund’s website,3 America’s hardworking workers had squirreled away $1.64 trillion in the Trust Fund. But the President wasn’t buying it. Not one bit.
To illustrate his point about the Trust Fund’s nonexistence, the President spent some taxpayer money to take a trip to the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where a tour guide showed him the actual filing cabinet full of paper notes representing the bonds in which the Trust Fund is invested. Then the President went outside and reported on his findings:
There is no “trust fund,” just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay—will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs.
Bush used vivid imagery to drive home his point about the IOUs:
They’re stacked in a filing cabinet. Imagine—the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet.
Those “IOUs” were actually what you and I call U.S. Treasury bonds, the safest investment on the planet. Or so I had thought. But now Bush was saying they were worthless, because “there is no ‘trust fund.’ ” This might have spooked the Chinese and Japanese governments that have kindly paid for our trade deficits by buying up treasury bonds by the hundreds of billions. It also might have spooked the ghosts of the members of Congress and state legislatures who, in 1868, adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its fourth section kind of frowns on anyone, let alone the President, casting doubt on the full faith and credit of the United States. As ratified:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
Bush is lucky that he had a Republican Congress, or he almost certainly would have been impeached and imprisoned.
It’s hard to understand how Bush might have arrived at the weird idea that the Trust Fund was worthless, but the right-wing media were right there with him. Republican pundits everywhere joined in the slander of the United States Treasury. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer went so far as to write, “These pieces of paper might be useful for rolling cigars. They will not fund your retirement.” And as I’ve only recently learned, this line of thinking isn’t new. In a 1999 pamphlet, the Heritage Foundation wrote that the Trust Fund “contains no genuine assets, only government bonds.”
What were they all talking about? If you really want to understand their perspective, I do know one way to do it. I’ve arranged for my publisher to apply a drop of LSD to the upper right-hand corner of this page. Just rip off the page number and put it on your tongue. Now wait about twenty minutes.
Okay, ready? Are you tripping?
You’re gonna be fine, dude. Big Al is here to walk you through it. Okay.
Take out your wallet, man. Now pull out a bill. Look at the face. Is it Lincoln? Is it Washington? Both? Actually, dude, it doesn’t matter which one it is.
He’s talking to you. He’s saying, “Hey, man. I’m worthless. I’m just a fuckin’ piece of paper, dude. You can’t redeem me for gold, or silver, or nothin’. I mean, just think about it. All I am is a piece of paper.”
You see? Bonds are just like dollar bills, dude. They’re pieces of paper. And if the government decides not to pay, you’re screwed, man. Totally screwed. Totally.
Sucks to be you, man.
That’s what Bush was saying.
Was the President doing acid?