How the Republicans tore down our country

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10. if the gov't (outside socsec) runs a surplus, but socsec runs a bigger one, then total debt goes up.

the social security surplus goes into u.s. treasuries, which is intra-government debt.

so in the years under clinton in which we ran a surplus, by which i mean the federal government (outside of social security) spent less than it took in, that extra money was available to reduce the federal debt.

meanwhile, social security ran a surplus, taking in more than it paid out. the extra was invested in treasuries, which increased the federal debt.

so what's going on here? how is it possible that both parts of the government take in more than they spend and yet total debt increases? essentially only because we're counting the intra-government debt (i.e., treasuries) that social security is holding. in effect, this makes it sound bad only by ignoring the money "saved" by social security.

in short, you're counting the intra-government debt as a liability but ignoring the same intra-government debt as an asset.
that is, if you want to say that clinton didn't run a surplus because total debt actually increased, you have to give clinton credit for a big build up to the social security trust fund.