Remember that “lockbox” that was going to save Social Security?
The lockbox was the accounting fiction used by Republican President Ronald Reagan and congressional Democrats to make it appear they were being responsible in preparing for the crisis facing Social Security. The idea was that Social Security’s projected surplus revenues in the 1980s and 1990s would be put in the “lockbox” to be available in 2011, when the baby boomer generation started retiring and the system headed toward bankruptcy.
Of course, the politicians couldn’t bear having all that unspent money justlying around and quickly started putting IOUs in the lockbox, while spending the Social Security taxes paid into the system on things like earmarks.
The truth is there was never a lockbox, except in the rhetoric of Washington politicos intent on spending more tax dollars.
Now, congressional Democrats are employing another Washington spending fiction to mask more spending increases in their proposed $2.9 trillion federal budget for fiscal 2008. It’s called the “Reserve Fund” and it makes possible a $50 billion hike in spending on health insurance for low-income children.
Under their “Pay-Go” rules, congressional Democrats promised not to raise spending unless there was specific federal revenue available to pay for it. The Reserve Fund is their way of guaranteeing a funding increase when — wink, wink — at a later date they will have found the needed revenues. Call it the “Spend Now, Maybe Pay Later” approach to federal budgeting.
Today’s congressional Democrats aren’t unique in using a sleight of hand like the Reserve Fund to mask the fact they are spending more of our hard-earned tax dollars on another of their favored special interests.
When the Republicans were in the majority, they used fictions like counting projected budget savings in future years to make this year’s budget appear to be balanced or at least getting closer to being balanced.
The problem is that like all lies, Washington’s spending fictions are meant to obscure the truth about irresponsible budgets, bureaucratic waste, fraud and rampant conflicts of interest.
The question is how much longer voters will tolerate politicians in both parties telling such whoppers with straight faces.
