Henry Waxman: “as we limp out of this Congress with an embarrassing budget debacle, I want to spend a few minutes talking about an…”

“as we limp out of this Congress with an embarrassing budget debacle, I want to spend a few minutes talking about an issue the Republican leadership wants to sweep under the rug: how their fiscal mismanagement is imperiling the Social Security program. The Federal budget has become an enormous mess. Before the Bush administration took office, independent budget experts were predicting a $3 trillion surplus over the next 10 years. Now experts are saying that under the President's budget we will have a deficit of over $2 trillion. This is the largest and most rapid decline in the Federal budget since the Depression. The mismanagement is so egregious it is breathtaking. Most Americans do not realize how the government pays for the deficit, but here is what happens: The government raids the Social Security trust fund. Let me repeat this. The Federal Government is going to run a deficit of over $2 trillion over the next 10 years. And to pay for this deficit, the government is going to borrow over $2 trillion from the reserves in the Social Security trust fund. They are going to raid your retirement nest egg to pay for subsidies for the energy companies, tax breaks for wealthy corporate executives. What does this mean to you? If you have a pay stub handy, all you have to do is take a look at the FICA deduction. This FICA deduction is what you pay into Social Security.…”