Tom Tancredo: “when I got back to my district, I asked people about what they think should be done with the budget surplus. On more…”

“when I got back to my district, I asked people about what they think should be done with the budget surplus. On more than one occasion, I am asked in return, ``what surplus?'' There are a lot of people out there who are on to the games we play in this town. They ask, how could there be a budget surplus if the national debt went up last year and will go up again this year? What kind of surplus is that? In fact, they are right. The Federal budget is only in surplus if we count the temporary surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. The ironic thing is that the government would never let a business keep its books that way. But that is the way it does with our seniors' retirement money. It uses it to mask the true size of the deficit. Republicans want to put an end to that. Many Democrats are not very happy about that prospect. Ending this practice would make it a lot harder to create new spending programs and expand the size of government. It sounds like another good reason why we should do it, does it not?”