Chris Chocola: “Well, Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question, and there has been a lot of discussion about what is the trust fund.…”

“Well, Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question, and there has been a lot of discussion about what is the trust fund. Does it have money in it? Does its have IOUs in it? Really, what does it have? And that question was presented to David Walker, who is Comptroller of the United States and responsible for the GAO. In a committee hearing he was asked, how would you characterize the trust fund? And David Walker is one of the most honest, knowledgeable people I have ever heard talk about this issue. He is a Clinton appointee, but he does not talk about it in partisan ways at all. And paraphrasing his response, he said, well, the trust is less of a trust and more of an accounting device. It really is only pieces of paper in a filing cabinet. There is no marketable securities in there. And I think his point was that we need to act now. Because in less than 3 years from now, in 2008, the baby boomers will start to retire. What we are faced with, in large part, is a demographic math problem. We have so many people retiring that we do not have enough people paying into the system to be able to provide the benefits for those collecting those benefits. So that the trust fund itself, again characterizing the comments of David Walker, is that there are no assets there. There are only liabilities. They are IOUs that the government owes itself and that we must pay. We must find a way to live up to the promises we have made to current retirees and future retirees.…”