Letter: Our government has cooked the books for years

Tuesday, July 16, 2002 | 8:55 a.m.

Enron and WorldCom move over! Based on what President Bush and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt said last Tuesday, our White House and Congress are 76 years overdue for a $5 trillion cooking of the books which very adversely affects all nongovernment employees.

It is true that several billion dollars is devastating to thousands of investors and future retirees of the above companies. However, trillions of dollars are involved in the Social Security program administered by Congress and White House occupants since 1936.

Since 1936, $5 trillion of Social Security premiums paid by American taxpayers, over and above benefits paid out, have been spent (expenses) by our representatives in Washington but shown as assets by the bookkeepers in D.C. When a federal agency (the Social Security Administration) buys U.S. government bonds with Social Security reserve money (they call it a surplus), it is like a person who spends money from one pocket and replaces it with an IOU in another pocket.

The board of directors (the White House and Congress) and their auditors, if any, seem to have followed "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices" each year when they spent the entire Social Security surplus. Some of these expenditures were good for the people of America, but many were strictly pork-barrel items geared to win re-election of those in power.

LARRY JOHNSON