Ed Royce: “the time is now to save the Social Security Trust Fund. And I say that because it has been 30 years that the Federal…”

“the time is now to save the Social Security Trust Fund. And I say that because it has been 30 years that the Federal Government has run chronic budget deficits, until last year. We were looking, 4 years ago, at budget deficits which were $200 billion a year, and we anticipated that they would go out as far as the eye could see. But, instead, we took some actions in the Congress. We slowed the rate of growth of government spending and we reformed welfare. We reformed welfare, and close to 40 percent of the people on welfare are now in working jobs. When we slowed the rate of government growth and brought the revenues and expenditures into balance and eliminated much of the wasteful government spending, we found that the interest rates dropped by 2 full percentage points, and this has helped the economy. When we instituted the cut in the capital gains tax to 20 percent and reduced that capital gains tax, we found that that further stimulated the economy. As a matter of fact, it brought in more in revenue than we had raised off the capital gains tax, a higher tax, the prior year. So we have cut taxes. We have instituted a $500 per child tax credit. At the same time, we have balanced the budget so that now we have a surplus instead of a deficit. So what should we do with that surplus? My bill, H.R. 160, would designate 90 percent of the total budget surplus to buy marketable U.S. securities that are out on the market. They are interest bearing.…”