James Rogan: “I was among hundreds of Republicans last month who stood and applauded President Clinton when he spoke in this Chamber I…”

“I was among hundreds of Republicans last month who stood and applauded President Clinton when he spoke in this Chamber I applauded because I thought he said that we should use any budget surplus to save ``Social Security first.'' That is why so many of us vigorously applauded a position we thought he was taking. However, I have gone back and looked at his speech. What he actually said was we should ``reserve'' every penny of the surplus until we ``save'' Social Security. What does that mean? We find out from the President's budget recently submitted that it does not mean reserving the surplus for Social Security Trust Fund, because in the budget he presented, there is $100 billion in new taxes, $100 billion in new spending, but nothing about putting the surplus into Social Security. In fact, his senior economic advisers later have said they don't know what ``reserving'' it means. Mr. Speaker, Mark Twain said everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. This administration talks a good game about Social Security, but he hasn't done anything about it in his budget proposal. It would be nice if the President treated Social Security better than Mark Twain treated the weather.”