February 27, 2004 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a promise to the wage earners of this nation. He promised that if they would pay a tax on their wages their employer would equal it and when they reached 65 they would be entitled to a pension paid from the Social Security Trust Fund. Over the generations America has kept that promise. But while generations have relied upon it generations of Congressmen have found the Social Security Trust Fund an easy resource to fund other promises that they found it expedient to make. Social Security has added entitlements to its catalog of old age and survivor’s benefits. Supplemental Security Income provides a safety net for those not otherwise entitled to draw social security but who are unable to provide for themselves. Two generations ago Congress cooperated with the President to use the Social Security Trust Fund to disguise the real operating deficit by the simple technique of including its assets in a unified operating budget.

The Ponzi game financing that each succeeding administration adopted ran out its string in the first three years of the Bush Administration. The $1.7 Trillion balance in the Social Security Lock Box has been matched by the package of tax cuts George Bush has handed out to those of his patrons most able to contribute to the costs of maintaining the commonwealth. The increase to the national debt created by the first three Bush deficits and the deficits he forecasts for the next four years will exceed that figure. Alan Greenspan warns that the deficit will require a reduction in both Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The President persists in his scheme to open the Social Security vault door to his friends on Wall Street. He told an audience today that Republicans "trust the people, not Washington politicians, to make the best decisions for their own money, their own health, their own retirement, and their own lives." Well, the President can’t have it both ways. He cannot use the Social Security Trust Fund to finance the Federal Government at the same time he diverts its assets into the hands of the speculators and corporate raiders.

Keeping the promises made in the citizens’ contract with America requires that the Social Security Trust Fund be restored to its function, financing the safety net that we as a nation promised to each citizen. Not only has the President mortgaged our children’s future to reward his friends, now he wants to steal it altogether.