Jack Kingston: “Essentially, when we talk about Social Security, is what seniors are saying, is protect it from general highway…”

“Essentially, when we talk about Social Security, is what seniors are saying, is protect it from general highway appropriations, or AmeriCorps, or the NEA, or whatever the folks want to spend money on; just use the Social Security money only for Social Security. That is what seniors say. What the younger folks say is, put me in a private program; the existing program is not going to be there when I retire. So the great beauty of this Neumann budget is he calls it a Social Security preservation budget. I call it the grandma and the grandbabies' budget, because it looks at both spectrums of our population, the demographics, which I think is extremely important. Let me read the gentleman some statistics that were given to me by a man named Pete Davies of Sun City, AZ. It says, prior to 1929 it was a disgrace for an administration to run a deficit. Out of the 140 years between the year 1790 and 1929, there were 87 years in the history of the United States when there was a surplus, and that resulted in a reduction of whatever debt had been out there.”