LETTERS: BORROWING CREATES SURPLUS ILLUSION

To the editor:

The U.S. government's fiscal year has ended on Sept. 30. The administration has again triumphantly announced the great national lie to ourselves that the federal budget has a surpllus of $70 billion. As explained earlier, this is the result of unified budget accounting. Again, unified budgeting involves combining all income in one total, including the money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund and other trust funds.

Bearing this in mind, we can now put actual numbers to this scenario. It is now documented that when we subtract the borrow3ed money from the trust funds from the total annual income, the budget is still $40 billion in the hole. The upshot of this is that budget manipulators have simply used $110 billion of borrowed money to create the illusion of a balanced budet and a surplus. Is this national integrety, or what?

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau