David Minge: “we have had a great deal of rhetoric this year about the optimistic surplus forecasts for the Federal budget. It is…”

“we have had a great deal of rhetoric this year about the optimistic surplus forecasts for the Federal budget. It is truly a great day if we can say that there is a surplus. But the truth of the matter is that we do not have a surplus, we still have a deficit; we are still in an era of deficit spending. Why is this? The chart that is right to my right here indicates what is happening. The red line shows the surplus in the Social Security trust account each year. It continues to grow because the baby-boom generation is paying in record amounts for Social Security. At the same time, that lower line shows the rhetoric, the expectation that we actually have some sort of a surplus in the budget, down here, as much as $4, $5, $8 billion. The truth of the matter is, this line shows what is actually happening. That is the deficit that we are running. What does this mean? It means that the attractive, the appealing, and to a certain extent the deceptive promises that we can have new programs, that we can cut taxes, that this will be painless, that somehow the political system will accept these sacrifices that are necessary to achieve these ends, all of this is illusive.”