... Berry reports that Simpson now believes that it would be unfair to use general revenues to pay for any portion of Social Security benefits. In other words, the large surplus in the Social Security trust fund, which is made up of government bonds that general revenues are earmarked to pay for, does not really exist and cannot be drawn upon. "Simpson maintained," according to Berry, that "Social Security is already insolvent because it is paying out more than it is getting in tax revenue." Never mind that the plan since 1983 has been for Social Security to tax more than it spends for a full generation and then use the built-up surpluses to spend more than it taxes.

"There is no surplus in there. It's a bunch of IOUs," Berry reports Simpson as having said. "Listen. It's two-and-a-half trillion bucks in IOUs which have been used to build the interstate highway system and all of the things people have enjoyed since it has been set up."

Simpson is not making sense. All investments are IOUs. A General Electric bond is just that – a promise by the General Electric Company to pay its creditors. A dollar bill is an IOU from the government, just like a Social Security Trust Fund bond is.

Perhaps the most bizarre of Simpson’s claims that are quoted by Berry is that the Social Security Commission of 1983 "never knew there was a baby boom…." The baby boom, of course, started immediately after World War II and peaked in 1960. As Berry writes: "Alan Greenspan, who headed…[that] commission ... would tell Simpson something different. The big demographic shift that began right after World War II was precisely why…taxes were raised and benefits were cut [in 1983] – to build up a trust fund surplus so benefits could be paid."