Political Quotes

“this has piqued my curiosity as to what is excluded because, if we just follow the logic of the distinguished Senator from Illinois, I stretched my memory back to see if there was a time when the Federal Government ever bailed out Social Security. I do not believe there was. There were times when the Federal Government, the Congress, has raised the FICA tax, but the FICA tax is a compulsory dedicated tax that goes for retirements. I find it somewhat interesting that some programs--and it does refer to quasigovernmental programs in this as well--some programs are exempted under this bill and others are not. Of course, the program which is most important to the American people is Social Security. It is not exempted. It is not exempted because there will be 3 trillion dollars' worth of surplus revenues that are going to be taken from Social Security and used to balance the budget. That is what Senator Reid and I do not think is right. I would just like very much to obtain a full list from the committee and from the authors of this as to precisely which programs are being exempted from the balanced budget amendment.”