The trillion dollar swindle

I'm no expert on the Enron scandals, one of the most complex collections of financial manipulations in the nation's history. But I do know that one big part of the plan was to create companies and move money between them, counting that money as profit. It's kind of like moving a dollar from your left pocket to your right and saying you just made yourself one dollar richer.

Why bring this up now? Because the Republicans are planning on using Enron-style accounting when they privatize Social Security in the coming year.

A brief bit of background. The current taxes you pay into Social Security pay the benefits that Seniors receive. Republicans plan to privatize Social Security by allowing current payees to divert payments into private accounts (which will risk their future guaranteed benefits). That means that the money that currently pays Social Security will no longer be there to pay current recipients. So those benefits will need new funds, meaning vast new deficits — a specialty of the Republicans.

But the Republicans are taking a lesson from Enron by coming up with ways to make the deficit go away — by pretending it isn't there.

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without — at least on paper — expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall.

Their willingness to deceive the American people is breathtaking. They'll steal up to a trillion dollars and just make it disappear. They make up the rules, and they have no problem with rewriting them to accomplish whatever they want.