That long term liability becomes unfunded when the Govt spends the money on things other than SS and Medicare and those TBills are an expense because they have to be funded by CASH. Where is the money going to come from to fund those T-Bills?
Oh, we're going for a subject change now, are we? This might be the first wise thing you've done to get out of the hole you created were it not for the fact that yet again you've demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of not just the budgeting and fiscal terms but not even the mechanism of how SS functions. You really don't even understand basic accounting terms. Contributions to SS/MC are assets not liabilities; distributions are the liabilities. When you deposit money into your bank account do you call that the creation of a liability since you will spend some of that money later? Maybe you do but that's not how accountants look at it. But you have (inadvertently, of course) put your finger on why there can be budget surpluses and yet the debt still goes up. In Clinton's case, the money borrowed from the SS trust fund (in the form of TBills issued to the trust fund) due to the massive Reagan/BushI deficits and the interest had to be paid back to the trust fund so the debt didn't actually decrease. But one can see strong evidence of reduction of the rate of increase by looking at your favorite site (treasury direct, debt to the penny). Here's a summary of the few years right before the Clinton surpluses and then the years during the surpluses. Even you might be able to see that there was a 90% decrease (in the rate of increase). I also included the first Bush FY to demonstrate how drastically it went up again after his disastrous tax cuts took effect (FY 2002). Just look at how the debt only increased by $18B from 1999-2000 but is up over $400B by end of FY2002, just two years into the Bush Disaster tax cuts.
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32