Just one minute continues to flog its case for privatization by arguing, for the umpteenth time, that the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist, and that therefore Social Security will start to go bankrupt in 2018, instead of the more widely accepted figures of 2042 (Social Security trustees) and 2052 (CBO).

What rhetorical sleight of hand do they use to accomplish this? They rely on the Heritage Foundation’s Myth 2, which is one of most appalling cases of sophistry I’ve ever read. Here’s a taste of it:

The Social Security trust fund contains nothing more than IOUs (in the form of special issue U.S. Treasury bonds), which the federal government can repay only though higher taxes, massive borrowing, or massive cuts in other federal programs.

Imagine if I went to the bank and asked to withdraw from my account, only to be told that my money was “nothing more than an IOU,” and that the bank could only repay me by decreasing its own profits or borrowing money from somebody else. I would try to restrain myself from throttling the bank teller (after all, there would be security guards around), and then I would tell her that I realize the bank might want to keep my money, but in fact I would please like to have it back, NOW.

Yes, Mr. Heritage Foundation, sir, a bond is technically “nothing more than an IOU” — a contractually binding document obligating the debtor to repay the creditor. The debtor is obligated to pay, and the creditor is obligated to not give a rat’s ass how the debtor comes up with the money.

The Bush administration has for years used the trust fund as a sort of smoke screen to conceal the real size of the federal government’s deficit, but in 2018, the federal government *will* need to start repaying it. This is not because the Social Security system is in crisis, it’s because the federal budget is in crisis. Instead of accepting responsibility for his massive debt, Bush is shuffling off the blame to Social Security, which had carefully planned to carry a surplus for over 20 years in order to pay for the baby boom’s retirement.