February 03, 2011 12:18 AM UTC

Doug Lamborn: Pay China First

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• by: Phoenix Rising

(Explain this to Grandma. Or for that matter, your kids. Go ahead. – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I feel rather sorry for Cory Gardner getting all the attention for sponsoring extreme bills.  So let me direct your attention to H.R. 421 – “To require that the Government prioritize all obligations on the debt held by the public in the event that the debt limit is reached.”

Doug Lamborn is one of only 15 co-sponsors of this bill.

Just what does the bill aim to do, though?  Isn’t all U.S. debt held “by the public”?

As it turns out, no.  There’s one very important bit of government debt that isn’t considered “held by the public” – the “IOUs” on the Social Security Trust Fund, valued in the trillions of dollars.  These are the funds Al Gore wanted put “in a lock box”, which maintain the security of millions of Americans in their old age.  (Actually, there is one other government-held bit of debt that gets lumped in here – veterans benefits have a fund apparently maintained in the same way.)

This bill, then, proposes to pay our externally held debt – a bit under half of which is owned by foreign governments – before paying the U.S. public which has invested its working-class tax dollars into Social Security Insurance.  The message: China, Japan, and other governments deserve our money more than U.S. citizens.

If anyone has any doubts about the pre-ordained vote to extend the SSI employee tax cut, it seems pretty obvious that at least Doug Lamborn and 15 of his closest House buddies, along with former Club For Growth President turned Senator Pat Toomey and his 18 Senate co-sponsors, are itching for an extension of the cuts, repayment of the fund highly optional.  They want Social Security DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.

Thanks, Rep. Lamborn – but no thanks.  This is out of touch with what Americans want.