Bad to worse

After years of Republican cries that there is no surplus (all the way back to 2000, if you recall), there's a brand new GOP plan to use the nonexistent surplus to fund private accounts:

Instead of allowing Congress to quietly borrow the Social Security surplus, the DeMint plan gives it to workers in the form of accounts that are invested in regular issue government bonds. This means that if Congress wants to spend at the same level that it does now, it will have to borrow the money to finance it openly in the financial markets. Instead of overspending by $450 billion and hiding $80 billion of that spending by borrowing the Social Security surplus and reporting a deficit of only $370 billion, Congress will have to report the real deficit of $450 billion.

So instead of borrowing money from the "surplus" to fund the War in Iraq, the GOP proposes borrowing money from the trust fund - still underfunding the future of Social Security, mind you - to gamble with the future. Plus, if you lend the money to buy government bonds to the government, then the government can still spend the "surplus" that doesn't exist on government programs. So your money is spent twice, once on the private accounts and once still on the government programs the surplus is currently spent on as well. Then in 2009, as the public claims their "private accounts," the deficit goes to hell, much sooner than it would if nothing was done.

Confusing? Sure. And maybe that's the point. The less the public understands, the less it has to argue with. And that could be what Republicans hope for. However, Democrats will stand resolute against private accounts in any form, so it is doubtful this latest bad idea will go anywhere. And there should be nothing confusing about that.