Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “Exactly. And what the gentleman said about debt in general and making sure that we continue to have sound public policy…”

“Exactly. And what the gentleman said about debt in general and making sure that we continue to have sound public policy when it comes to Social Security, these senior citizens understand that because we do not have the savings in generations following them, we have to make sure that we adopt an approach to fixing Social Security that recognizes that the emphasis should be on encouraging savings. There is a way to do that without moving to a radical proposal like privatizing the program. Chairman Greenspan testified before the Committee on Financial Services and was pretty unequivocal in his testimony before our break about what he believes the direction we should take is. His focus was absolutely on any policy change that moved away from encouraging a national savings was not a sound one. Almost every one of the comments that he made undermined the President's arguments. He testified in front of our committee that the overriding long-term retirement issue facing the Nation is increasing national savings. Before I yield back, I want to tell my colleagues a really telling story. The thing that I think is important to stress is that Social Security was created in 1935. It was created by Democrats, it was sustained by Democrats, it was improved by Democrats and that has generally been virtually without any Republican support for Social Security. It was not created with Republican votes. It has not been fixed by Republican leadership.”