“Astonishing,” says [Tennessee Democrat Jim] Cooper of the new president’s avowed determination to confront the crisis. Leadership, says Cooper, who has seen precious little of it concerning entitlements, enlarges the number of “things that can be talked about.” Such as the Social Security payroll tax, which Cooper would cut for several stimulative years from 12.4 percent to 8 percent. It suppresses job creation, is raising more revenue than Social Security is dispensing and will continue to do so until 2017.<\/p>\n
Cooper wishes more Americans were similarly eccentric and would read the 188-page 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government \u201d\u201c the only government document that calculates what deficit and debt numbers would be if the government practiced, as businesses must, accrual accounting.<\/p>\n
Under such accounting, the deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 would have been $3 trillion rather than $454.8 billion. The report’s numbers show that the true national debt is $56 trillion, not the widely reported $10 trillion.<\/p>\n