From: "George Sherwood" 

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:29:29 +0200, Phil Payne wrote:

> Sneaky lot, the GOP.  What happened to those Enron guys?
>
> http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060803/1a_coverart03.art_dom.htm
>
> "The federal government keeps two sets of books.
>
> The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a
> $318 billion deficit in 2005.
>
> The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement
> produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting
> rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit
> for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included - as the board that
> sets accounting rules is considering - the federal deficit would have been
> $3.5 trillion."

All this is fine and if we are going to use these accounting rules we
should use them.  But to target this some how against Bush is just more of
the bashing.  Using these rules, most of the Clinton surplus never was a
real surplus.  Have to read past the headline to come up with that.

George

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