Creative Accounting

It looks like the Republicans in the Senate Budget Committee have been taking some lessons from Enron and WorldCom on how to cook the books.

They want to let younger people invest some of their social security money in private accounts. But the problem with this, is that their money won't be used to pay social security money to old people who need it now. Their money will be invested in corporations instead. So the government has to have 1.5 trillion more dollars over the next ten years to give to the old people. That's really expensive.

Now, if you remember Mr. Bush and his friends promised us way back before the election that he would cut the deficit in half by 2009. Now if he wants to do this, he has to magically come up with 1.5 trillion dollars. And since his magic pixie dust ran out on Nov 2nd, he and his friends are coming up with some goofy ways to account for paying these social security benefits.

My favorite is "they may take the costs 'off-budget,' meaning Social Security spending would not be included in the calculation of the annual budget deficit."

I think we should take a lot of things off the budget. Like the war in Iraq and free ice cream on Tuesdays for all third-graders.