If the government here was held to the same standards of accounting practice that the private sector is, most of the population of Washington D.C. would be so far back in jail you'd have to pump air down to them.

The book juggling that politicians do to make surplus and deficit figures come out the way they want is fascinating enough all by itself.

As just one example, look at Social Security, which in the private sector would be a classic Ponzi scheme (money is never actually invested profitably, but the investments from later suckers are used to pay off earlier ones). Much is often made of one group or another "spending" the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. In point of fact, every nickel of Social Security taxes is spent about a nanosecond after it lands in the "Trust Fund," since it is immediately borrowed by the government (used to buy T-bills, or some other government paper) and has been every year for decades. The "Trust Fund" basically consists of a room full of government I.O.U.s. Everything else is fiddled by moving numbers around on the accounting columns.

This is not widely advertised by politicians of either party.