About those Treasury Bonds...

From an explanation on Social Security in the USA Today:

Social Security trust fund has built up IOUs because it currently collects more payroll taxes than it pays out in benefits. It gives the surplus to the Treasury to spend on other government programs. In return it gets interest-bearing Treasury bonds.

So the government issues Treasury Bonds as IOUs (in the President's words) to cover the money it borrows from the Social Security surplus. That much makes sense. But Bush has stressed the lack of faith that he has in these Treasury Bonds at every stop along his Social Security tour. Here's an example from his social security speech in South Carolina on April 18:

Some people think there's a Social Security trust, where the government is holding your money, in an account with your name on it. It just doesn't work that way. That's not the way the system works. There is no vault holding your cash, waiting for you to retire. Instead, because we spend Social Security taxes on current retirees and other government programs, all that is left over in the so-called security trust is a bunch of filing cabinets with IOUs [treasury bonds] in them.

As a matter of fact, I went to West Virginia the other day to look at the filing cabinets, to make sure the IOUs [treasury bonds] were there -- paper. And it's there. And it's, frankly, not a very encouraging sight.:

However, last night in his speech to the American people, he was singing an entirely different tune about the financial security of treasury bonds:

I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Options like this will make voluntary personal retirement accounts a safer investment that will allow an American to build a nest egg that he or she can pass on to whomever he or she chooses.

So which is it? Either TBs are useless IOUs not worth the paper they're written on or they're a secure investment back by the full faith and credit of the US government. So which is it, Mr. President?

Postscript: And in case you're wondering about the IOUs:

Physically, the trust fund consists of 8-by-11-inch sheets of paper, fastened inside two notebooks and tucked in a drawer of a four-drawer filing cabinet at the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va. The drawer is secured by a combination lock.