Finally, a few of the major media reporters are beginning to notice that the job situation in America is not all that it’s cracked up to be. By following payroll taxes, we’ve known this for a long time. In fact, the situation is relatively stagnant:

In fiscal 2006, the federal government walked off with $78.2 billion of our supplemental retirement money. This is more loot than they had in 2004 when they took $71.1 billion, but it’s not as good as last year’s $86.5 billion and it’s a long way from the nearly one hundred billion the government enjoyed at the turn of the century.

The country needs roughly one hundred fifty thousand new jobs every month to keep up with the increasing population and the limited number of retiring generations from the Great Depression when population increase dropped in half and was followed by sixteen million who went off to WWII. Last month we had only fifty-nine thousand new jobs, a ninety thousand shortfall. What’s more, most of the new jobs are in the service sectors with manufacturing losing nineteen thousand jobs in September.

What does this say about President Bush’s claims of a “booming economy?” Speaking of jobs lost in manufacturing, we also ended the fiscal year with more than an $800 billion trade deficit. We took in $800 billion more in goods coming into the country than going out.

Another promise Bush has made is to cut in half the amount of money the government borrows in order to make ends meet, the deficit that he ran up, and do so by the time he leaves office. The deficit for fiscal 2006 that just ended is being hailed as a surprisingly low $247.7 billion and that Bush is finally keeping one of his promises.

But how real is this deficit when it doesn’t include the $78.2 billion supposedly “borrowed” from Social Security which, by itself, would bring the 2006 deficit to $325.9 billion. And then we should add in the other money taken from taxpayers or "borrowed" as we go through the following elements of the fiscal 2006 deficit:

• It cost taxpayers $33.9 billion to support benefits for the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) that never has sufficient contributions from the insured and would be a bankrupt insurance business run out of town if it were in the private sector. Added to the Social Security gift, this brings the deficit to $359.8 billion.

• Taxpayers also gave an even $4 billion to the Federal Employees Life & Health program, another government insurance business that never has any income whatsoever, nothing, zero, zip, zilch, nada, squat, the big goose egg, and spends hundreds of millions per month which somehow get counted as a “surplus” increasing the fund’s holdings. The real cash for benefits comes from the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury. This brings the deficit to $363.8 billion.

• Nineteen billion, one hundred and eighty million, was taken from Medicare; the program that politicians and bureaucrats would like you to believe is in so much trouble. Counting this pushes the 2006 deficit to $383 billion.

• The Military Retirement Insurance program has almost as many monthly shortfalls as FERS and in the 2006 fiscal year $14.9 billion was covered by money from the General Fund bringing the total deficit to $397.9 billion. It’s mounting up isn’t it?

• The Federal Disability Insurance fund that is also part of what we generally call the “Social Security trust fund” had shortfalls that are not supposed to happen until "baby boomers" affect the program and amounted to $5.2 billion which also had to be taken from money in the General Fund to pay benefits. This brings the deficit to $403.1 billion.

• Other “draw downs” include the Highway trust at $3.99 billion, Airports & Airways at $2.8 billion, Unemployment at $9.2 billion, and Veterans Life Insurance at 917 million. Add another $16.9 billion to the deficit and it's up to $420 billion.

• Except for Social Security, all of the above involved draw downs. Months when accounts had a shortfall and turned to the general fund for cash. On the other hand, during the months that many of these accounts had a surplus, what would be called a profit in the private sector, the Beltway Bandits took that money too, replacing it with nonmarketable bonds or chits that will allow them to once more “draw down” on the account sometime in the future. Yes, they get it from us both ways. They’ve got us coming and going. And surplus cash stolen in fiscal 2006, other than Social Security, amounted to an additional $65 billion ($64.956 billion) which brings the total deficit for 2006 to $484.956 billion.

That’s the real deficit – $485 billion. All of this money came out of your pocket and if we all paid equal taxes would amount to almost $4,000 per taxpayer. And they add interest on top of this amount.

The Treasury lists the total surplus for fiscal 2006 at $289 billion ($288.959 billion), but this includes “interest” against the balance at the close of fiscal 2005 which for Social Security alone was $94.6 billion added in fiscal 2006. It doesn't cost the federal government one red cent to do this. Interest was paid by simply depositing more nonmarketable debt chits in accounts, and this particular interest does not become real cash until drawn down sometime in the future. Until that time, interest paid with nonmarketable bonds is just another debt marker.

By itself, the Social Security trust fund (the combination of FOA&SI and Disability Insurance) now stands at $2 trillion ($1.995 trillion) and is 24 percent of the entire national debt.

Notice that interest increases continuously and in perpetuity. Just think of where we would be if this interest were paid in real cash from the government's budget instead of debt markers. In fact, there is no need to print more money, or scapegoat the Federal Reserve for doing so, when the government can simply issue more nonmarketable treasuries to get your cash.

Of the 136 trust funds in Intragovernmental Holdings at the close of fiscal 2005, ninety-seven percent of that $3.7 trillion debt is represented by 32 entitlements including those covered above. While the remainders not mentioned in this article are generally much smaller, I cannot determine their effects until the entire 2006 trust fund list is available. If a serious adjustment is necessary at that time, I’ll let you know.

Finally, while there is a great deal of talk about “saving” Social Security, all of this palaver flies in the face of the first two accounts above, FERS and the Federal Life & Health accounts that are the extreme use of fraudulent treasuries. If the government can simply distribute these securities willy-nilly – then they can do the same thing with Social Security even though the amounts involved would be significantly greater. If the retiring "baby boomers" are putting a strain on the system, just throw some more nonmarketable bonds on the pile and everything will be hunky dory.

Paraphrasing the words of Thomas Saving, one of the trustees of Social Security; We can make these accounts anything we want and they can last forever. And in the words of Alan Greenspan when asked to comment on “fictional” trust funds said; “The only thing that matters is that they’re enforceable.”

We are straddled with more than forty percent of the national debt that serves no purpose other than to tax and double tax us under the “Pay-It-Again Sam” scam. We got this debt by giving them money, more money than they needed for entitlements like Social Security. Isn't that ironic?

It could all be eliminated tomorrow by the push of a delete key and tearing up Social Security’s backup Parkersburg papers. And it could be done without harm to anyone but the Beltway Bandits. Taxpayers would be in exactly the same position they’re in now except that it would take legislation to openly continue or reestablish some of these privileged accounts.

In a capitalist society much of our property and business is represented and traded by things other than hard cash. With only a few hundred billion in currency actually in circulation at any time, we are dependent upon the legality and integrity of contracts, deeds of ownership, established values, laws, and other agreements where common legality, authenticity, policies of commerce and output should rule with violations prosecuted. This is not the case when you can't trust trust funds, nonmarketable bonds, or any of the tools of federal fraud.