> Max writes: >The earmarking gives rise to the Trust Fund balance, > including its dates of cash deficits, overall deficit, and exhaustion of the fund balance, all of which are key to the current debate. As I said, > accounting may be dull, but it is political. It is the Right which is demeaning the significance of the Trust Fund. We should be upholding it. These are funds collected from workers for the program. Bonds held by the fund should be liquidated with general revenue (mostly income taxes) from the > Federal funds, not payroll taxes. Whether or how this is done is also important.< > But I thought you said that the idea that the SS budget should be separated from the rest of the budget would justify further cuts in civilian spending by increasing the rest of the budget's deficit. That seems to contradict what you say above.> In principle there is no contradiction between separate accounts and a definition of *the* deficit which unifies the accounts. mbs
