John Crudele takes the mystery out of the deficit numbers. Here’s the bottom line, but the article is well worth reading in full here → crudele
“Our nation’s debt was $8.899 trillion on July 25, 2007. Just put the word “trillion” after the above family’s budget to make things simpler.
On July 25, 2008, our indebtedness had risen to $9.540 trillion.
Do the math.
The US went $641 billion deeper into debt over the past year – even as the government was claiming a deficit of “just” $389 billion.
Why are the numbers so different? Mainly, it seems, because Washington has the right to “borrow” excess Social Security funds, and last year the nation’s retirement system coughed up $181 billion to paper over part of the budget deficit.
That would be fine if the Social Security money actually belonged to the government. But it doesn’t.”
