God, is Bush a tool

Via The Next Hurrah, Our Leader today has apparently backed off the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution he was elected (sort of) to uphold:

To dramatize Social Security's future solvency problem, the president peered into the four-drawer ivory cabinet inside the Bureau of Public Debt office here along the Ohio River. In the second drawer was a white three-ring binder filled with pieces of paper providing physical evidence of $1.7 trillion in treasury bonds that back Social Security benefits.

"Imagine," Bush said in a speech a short time later at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. "The retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet.

"It's time to strengthen and modernize Social Security for future generations with growing assets that you can control, that you call your own — assets that the government can't take away."...

The pieces of paper Bush saw are not real Treasury securities. In today's computer age, investors no longer get honest-to-goodness Treasury bonds they can hold in their hands. However, by law, the bureau creates paper bonds to put in the file cabinet just in case anybody, like Bush, wants to see the trust fund.

While the paper IOUs are not negotiable instruments, they still represent trust fund Treasury bonds that are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.

Jeez, look at all these dollar bills in my wallet. They're just pieces of paper with a bunch of words and pictures printed on them! Sure, they SAY they're worth something, and the Treasury SAYS they will back it up, but what does that really mean? I wish somebody would strengthen my wallet and turn these worthless pieces of paper into ASSETS for me!

Seriously, this is some fucked-up shit. Bush is saying that the money he's raided from the Social Security Trust Fund, money that he's used to pay for the tax cuts and the wars and the out-of-control spending, is simply gone. And he's not going to pay it back. I know this President has experience welshing on his debts and sinking corporations into financial ruin, but this is the US government we're talking about here. The "pieces of paper" in the Bureau of Public Debt are $1.7 trillion in TAXPAYER dollars, paid into the legally functioning Social Security system, GUARANTEED as benefits for future retirees. If they're worthless, Bush is essentially saying that he stole the trust fund to the tune of $1.7 trillion dollars. Third world dictators are jealous of this guy.

And by the way, it's completely illegal, in violation of the aforementioned "full faith and credit' clause of the Constitution, and will surely cause a world economic crisis if taken the wrong way, because if Bush can default on the Social Security Trust Fund, he'd be happy to do it to the Chinese and Japanese, to whom we owe far more trillions.