Reply #4: Josh Marshall has been all over this today

[xray s]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004757

President Bush lays the groundwork for defaulting on almost two trillion dollars worth of US Treasury bonds, from today at the Commerce Department ...

Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -- what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what's going in -- what's coming out is greater than what's going in. It says we've got a problem. And we'd better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem.