The American Enterprise doesn’t mince words with a piece entitled The Great Social Security Embezzlement by William Tucker:

Every writer I know is looking for that dazzling phrase that brings the Social Security situation into focus. (That’s what us writers do for a living.)Clark S. Judge, managing director of the White House Writers Group (a private organization), made a great stab at it in the New York Post on Tuesday. He used the metaphor of Enron. What’s happening in the federal government now is exactly what happened to Ken Lay. It’s called ‘co-mingling of funds.'”

All this started way back in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson was trying to deliver both “guns and butter” and disguise the costs of the Vietnam War. Social Security was then a separate account…

Read the whole thing.Hat tip: National Center for Policy Analysis.