Todd Tiahrt: “once again we are stressed between a debate over spending the Social Security surplus. This bill that is the result of…”

“once again we are stressed between a debate over spending the Social Security surplus. This bill that is the result of this rule will protect the Social Security surplus, but one would not know it from the rhetoric. According to the other side we are actually dipping into the Social Security surplus by $17 billion. But once again we see that the sky is falling and Chicken Little is running about the House of Representatives. They say children will be sitting in crowded schools because of this, seniors will not eat, parents will be helpless to stop their children from doing drugs, medical research will be frozen for a year, and 50,000 troops will be laid off or reduced in force. Well, none of that is true. Let us just look at defense, for an example. General Shelton came to the House of Representatives, came to the Senate and he said, ``Here's the President's budget. We think it's sufficient to provide for our Department of Defense.'' Then we increased that amount of money in budget authority by $4.5 billion. Now a 1 percent cut would reduce that, but it's still $2 billion over the request that was completely sufficient, $2 billion more, and now, Mr. Speaker, all of a sudden we are going to be laying off 50,000 troops. How can that be? How can it switch when we are still increasing by $2 billion?”