Bill Clinton: “Because I'm against it. I haven't taken a position to get it achieved, because I think it would be a big mistake. The…”

“Because I'm against it. I haven't taken a position to get it achieved, because I think it would be a big mistake. The Social Security Fund has been investing in Government securities, which have the full faith and credit of the Government behind it. The Government then takes that money and spends it on other things; that's true. But it's an investment by the Social Security Trust Fund. If they take in more money in any given year than they give out as benefits, they have to do something with that money. They have to invest it somehow. If they invest it in Government securities, they get the money back plus interest, and it's the safest possible investment. Now, there was a lot of talk for years about how this amounted to a raid on the Social Security Trust Fund. And I could understand that talk because we were running huge deficits every year, so people had a right to ask, what's going to happen when the Government has to pay back the Social Security Trust Fund and the Trust Fund needs the money to pay out benefits--which is one reason it was so imperative that we balance the budget and then start running a surplus. But now the projected surpluses we have over the next 10 to 20 years are surpluses over and above what it will take to pay back to the Social Security Trust Fund the money of their investment plus interest. And I believe it was a good investment by the Social Security Trust Fund. I also think it was good for the taxpayers at large. It kept the Government from going out into the private markets, borrowing money, running interest rates up, and driving your interest rates up by making it harder for you to get money. So I don't agree that it was a bad policy. But it would have become a horrible policy if we hadn't balanced the budget and started running a surplus, because then when it came time for the Government to pay back the Social Security Trust Fund, we either wouldn't have been able to pay the money back or we would have had to sock you with a huge tax increase. But you don't have to worry about that now because we've got this deficit down, we're going to run a surplus, and it's going to look like a good investment of the Trust Fund, I think. [Panelist Representative Kenny C. Hulshof noted the existence of proposals in Congress to make Social Security surpluses untouchable, counteracting the tendency to create new programs with available money.]”