JOHN LINDER: “I agree that the point the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) made about preserving and protecting the Social…”

“I agree that the point the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) made about preserving and protecting the Social Security and Medicare are important. But I want to go back to the point that we have got the chance to pay down the debt, and we have got a significant budget surplus this year with which to do so. There are rumors around this town that the President is not going to sign our appropriations bills, not going to finish the year unless we spend anywhere from $20 billion to $45 billion more in ongoing spending in programs of his choice. If my colleagues will recall, in 1996 it cost us $7 billion in yielding to the President to get him to sign our budget so we could get out of town; in 1998, he held us up for $20.8 billion in more spending just to get the budget process finished; and, of course, those were $7 billion and $20.8 billion that we could have used to further reduce the debt on our grandchildren and their children. I always thought it was kind of strange that the President held a press conference after he signed that ugly budget in 1998 and said, 'The best news is I didn't let them spend one penny out of the Social Security surplus.' When in fact, of course, we spent $20.8 billion of it.”