8-20-2001: President Bush's gimmick to free up billions for the federal budget by changing Social Security accounting rules is the latest sign that his tax cut is driving the government down the road toward debtor's prison.

By recounting payroll taxes for the last three years, Bush will shift $4.3 billion from the Social Security surplus into the Treasury's general fund. It's a ruse. A fiscal sleight-of-hand. And dipping into Social Security to balance the budget is something the President promised not to do. But the Bush budgeteers have been scrambling for every extra billion they can find. One suspects they even looked under the mattress in the Lincoln Bedroom.

The reason is that the Congressional Budget Office has lowered its forecast for the nation's surplus to $160 billion from $275 billion. The drop was caused by lower tax revenues, extra spending by Congress and the mass mailing of $38 billion in tax rebates.

Because of the misguided tax cut, the Treasury Department announced two weeks ago that it will have to borrow to assure there is enough for the rebates. So instead of paring $57 billion from the national debt, as promised for the quarter, Treasury must borrow $51 billion. That's a $108 billion swing from black ink to red.

Borrowing to distribute political bequests to the citizenry is not smart policy no matter how you spin it.

Ronald Reagan left the country with a crushing debt burden after he handed out tax cuts to the wealthy. That helped lead the U.S. into a recession. In this respect, the Republican borrow-and-spend approach is no better than the tax-and-spend policies for which Democrats are rightly condemned.

Bush cannot honestly claim that the budget surplus will survive while Washington finances both a huge tax cut and a superexpensive missile defense shield. The 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut already is starting to eat up resources that could be better used to pay down the federal debt as well as enhance education, transportation and national defense.