JOHN LINDER: “to sit and listen to all these wonderful speeches about saving Medicare and Social Security is a wonderful thing, but…”

“to sit and listen to all these wonderful speeches about saving Medicare and Social Security is a wonderful thing, but the President's proposal does not do what they say it is going to do. The President's proposal does not change structurally Social Security and Medicare. It just puts a bunch of cash in after a system that is failing because fewer people are going to work and more people are retiring. Indeed, the President's budget borrows $800 billion out of the Social Security Trust over the next 10 years and puts IOUs in its place. Is that not what we have been doing for the last 30 years? Is that not what we are trying to get out of, borrowing from Social Security and putting IOUs in place? Indeed, the President's budget increases spending by a trillion dollars over 10 years and adds $800 billion to the national debt. This is hardly saving anything. If we want to save Social Security and Medicare, we are going to have to make structural reforms, structural reforms that extend not into the next 10 years but in the next generation and beyond. Allowing workers to put their own money into investments over time will do that, and the President is not proposing that at all.”