Lynn C. Woolsey: “Republicans must take all of us for fools, standing on a soap box trying to convince the American public that they are…”

“Republicans must take all of us for fools, standing on a soap box trying to convince the American public that they are the saviors of Social Security, when in fact they are like the thief who does not believe he has committed a crime until he gets caught. Then he goes, oh, I committed a crime. Instead of supporting Social Security, the Republican leadership has a long track record of hostility toward that good program. In fact, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, has maligned Social Security as a rotten trick and as a bad retirement for American people. Republicans have tried to eliminate Social Security. They have tried to privatize Social Security, and they are trying to steal from it. The Republican budget proposals before us this week and for the past few weeks would not add a single day to Social Security's solvency. We are already into the fourth week of fiscal year 2000 and the Republicans are covertly dipping into the Social Security program. The reality is that the Republican spending bills have already spent the Social Security trust fund surplus for fiscal year 2000. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, despite the majority's smoke and mirrors, they have borrowed more than $13 billion of the Social Security surplus up to this date. And by the time we are finished with all of the spending bills, CBO estimates, if we go in the way that they are proposing, that $13 billion will actually be $24 billion.”