Pelosi's really on the right track here (See Matt? I show the love). If Bush is denying the legitimacy of US Treasury Bonds, then that, not Social Security, is the real issue here. What's happened that America cannot pay back its debts? If our situation was truly so dire, shouldn't our president have known that and not pushed for deficit-worsening tax cuts or Medicare expansions? If we can't pay for the trust fund, can we pay the Chinese? Is there any chance they'd try to extract payment militarily? What about corporate investors? What about individual investors? Exactly who are we going to stiff? And if we're not going to welch to any of those investors, why are we not paying the trust fund back? Bush is like a kid with a mouth full of crumbs and a stomach ache who, when caught putting the lid on the cookie jar, turns and says "Cookies? We didn't have any cookies." This is either his fault or it's not happening.
If Democrats are smart, Republicans will rue the day they adopted this fake trust fund defense. The questions it raises about how our government is being run are much more serious than the doubt it casts on Social Security. The trust fund is, in essence, simply a government debt. The government runs thousands of different debts payable to millions of different sources. We've been doing that since the country's inception, and it works because we always pay back our debts. If we stop paying what we owe, our economy will crash. Bush and friends have thus adopted a line of attack that, far from nailing Social Security, is targeted right between their lying eyes, about six inches above their lying mouths. Debt repayment is the function of the government. Bush is the leader of the government. If the government can't pay back its debts, he better explain why, and quick. To paraphrase Alexis Bledel from Sin City, "Don't look now cowboy, but you're running out of valley".