Tom Harkin: “What do I mean by ``lockbox''? What I mean is that we are trying to treat Medicare as we treat Social Security; that we…”

“What do I mean by ``lockbox''? What I mean is that we are trying to treat Medicare as we treat Social Security; that we are going to say that in the future, the Medicare trust fund should be off budget, should not be counted in budget totals, that it should be off budget and should not in any way be able to be tapped into by this Congress or any succeeding Congress to pay for any deficit, to pay for any tax cuts, to pay for any other kind of spending in which this Congress or any future Congress wants to engage. That is really what a lockbox is. You take funds and you set them aside; you put them in a box and you lock it. That means you cannot tap into it. That is what the American people want us to do with Medicare and with Social Security. This is money that they have paid into out of payroll taxes. This is money that has been set aside for them for Medicare--and for Social Security, if we are talking about Social Security. We are only talking about Medicare here.”