Political Quotes

“I have just a few brief thoughts on this budget that has been submitted to us. The President's budget says we are going to have about a $4 trillion surplus over the next 15 years. He has said, and we agree, that we should fix Social Security first. We are going to do that. He believes that we ought to set 62 percent of the surplus aside for fixing Social Security. Again, we agree, because that is about what Social Security receipts are provided. But when we got his budget message and when we heard his State of the Union, we didn't see a fix to Social Security. We saw new gimmicks, financial gimmicks, borrowing more money. And under this plan that he has presented, while we are supposedly running these surpluses that will amount to $4 trillion, we are going to have to raise the debt ceiling within a couple of years because he is issuing more bonds. We are going to borrow our way into solvency for Social Security. Nobody has explained yet how that is going to work. But it is clear that he has not proposed any responsible reform of the Social Security system to make sure it is there. We in Congress are going to have to develop a plan. I believe we will. It is going to take some of the surplus, 62 percent. I think that we must do that because we owe that not only to those who are retired now and those who are about to retire, but to the baby boomers and others coming along who want to see retirement security.”