In his high sales State of the Union message, President Clinton said he intended to save every last cent of the expected budget surplus until Social Security's future problems have been solved. His aides later clarified that he didn't mean that the money would actually be used to shore up the system's future--only that it wouldn't be spent until some reforms were enacted. Moreover, the budget surpluses, if they actually materialize, are only the amount left over after the new spending and tax subsidies that the president and Congress favor. In any case, they will total nothing like the trillion dollar surplus that the Social Security trust funds will have accumulated, though only on paper, by the end of the century.