Bush talks trash about U.S. bonds

In this instance, the bogus threat conjured by Mr. Bush and his conservative supporters is the U.S. government’s abandonment of its commitment to generations of workers who paid taxes into the Social Security system. They tell us that the system is going bankrupt, that the system is "flat broke" -- by which they mean that the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund are worthless. The catch phrase they use is "worthless I.O.U.’s."
This is an argument that can be convincing only to someone who has no idea how government is financed every day -- which is to say, someone who doesn’t know that governments subsist on borrowing, just like corporations and families, and they always have. The scale is different, but the principle remains the same. If Treasury bonds are indeed "worthless," then the government itself must be on the verge of collapse.