Book Cooking

Do you know when was the last time our country was debt-free? It was January 1, 1835, under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party! In fiscal year 2008 the national debt increased from $9 trillion to slightly over $10 trillion. Yet the budget deficit in the last fiscal year was officially reported as being $455 billion.

These figures are reported in an article in yesterday's WSJ by John Steele Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt." Gordon asks,

"How could the national debt have increased by considerably more than twice the "deficit"? Simple. Just call the money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund an "intergovernmental transfer" and exclude it from the calculation of the deficit.

Corporate managers have gone to jail for less book cooking than that."