Pete Domenici: “In fact, I did not bring to the floor a chart showing that, but it is one of the wonderful, factual presentations about…”

“In fact, I did not bring to the floor a chart showing that, but it is one of the wonderful, factual presentations about how, after a few years, what they have been talking about down here, about 'the Social Security fund ought to be off budget so we can handle our matters within the rest of the budget and how we can protect its solvency,' it turns out that down the line a little--and if we do a constitutional amendment, it is going to be down the line for a long time, it should be here forever--when the Social Security fund starts to spend out and go in the red, guess what we can do? We can let it go right on in the red and spend. But over here on the rest of the budget, which we call the unified budget less Social Security, you can spend so much money in that budget and still be in balance because you are not charged with the deficit in Social Security. It is billions, about 18 or 20 years from now. You are going to be able to spend on this unified budget, less Social Security, something like $7 trillion more than you are currently expecting to spend, and be in balance, because you let this other big deficit occur and you do not do anything about it.”