Zoe Lofgren: “remember when Republicans told us we had so much money in the treasury that we would run out of debt to redeem? When…”

“remember when Republicans told us we had so much money in the treasury that we would run out of debt to redeem? When their majority leader was worried about a surplus of the surplus? And when our President told us there was plenty of money--enough to protect our country, leave Social Security untouched and still give a huge tax break to top income earners? It wasn't very long ago that we heard such things, but that isn't what we face now. We have a war, we have a recession and we have a tax cut. We need to pay for the war, work our way through the recession and take another look at the tax cut. It's just crazy to continue along as if nothing has happened with the budgeted tax cuts for top income earners that were adopted on the premise that we would have surpluses. We need to get together and take another stab at that plan-now that we know the surpluses are gone--to see whether we can manage all three: war, recession and tax cut. One thing we know is that we have to pay for the war efforts. Where I come from we have a saying: When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. I think this bill may be an attempt to use the war as cover: to pass a provision to allow the federal government to borrow billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund. This is necessary not because of the war, but because of the earlier tax cuts.”