Let's take the original projections. I'll take the figures from the Clinton News Network: $275 billion surplus.

Let's take the tax refund. $40 billion. That means we still have a $235 billion surplus.

Ahah! The economy has slowed down (of course this has to be Bush's fault, despite the fact they're still operating on the last Clinton budget), so the new projection (with tax refund still taken into account) is $200 billion. Well, a decrease in revenues of $35 billion isn't that hard to believe.

We still have a surplus!

And what's this stuff about dipping into Social Security revenues? You've swallowed the fiction of the Social Security trust fund? Those revenues have always been gimmicked with bonds and stuffed into the general fund anyway. If you pay this supposed shortfall, you still have a surplus of $190 billion or so.

And that's assuming there's a surplus anyway. Pages like [link|http://mwhodges.home.att.net/deficit-trusts.htm|Grandad's Trust Fund and Deficit Report] or [link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8876-2001Jul30.html|The Washington Post] are readily available via a Google search. The Washington Post may be more credible, and they essentially say there are $1 trillion of "bonds" in the "trust fund" that will have to be paid back from somewhere:

"These [trust fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures -- but only in a bookkeeping sense. . . . They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large Trust Fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the Government's ability to pay benefits."