Barney Frank: “I do not want the gentleman from Georgia to wonder all day about some of these things, so I have one answer and one…”

“I do not want the gentleman from Georgia to wonder all day about some of these things, so I have one answer and one correction. Our response to 9/11, the gentleman's memory seems to be failing him, was to vote virtually unanimously with only one dissent to invade Afghanistan and put an end to that regime. I am sorry we were not able to catch Osama bin Laden. But I have heard few distortions as great as to say that our response to 9/11 was whatever he said. In fact, we all but one on this side voted to go to war in Afghanistan. Now, that may seem a triviality to him, but it seems to me that that was a very useful response. Secondly, the gentleman wants to know what is our answer to Social Security. It is very simple: put the money back. If Social Security receives every dollar which has been paid into Social Security and the interest that it is legally entitled to receive on that, it is fully funded until sometime in the 2040s. Now, having spent some of the Social Security surplus for the war in Iraq, for tax cuts for the very wealthy, the President now says, Well, those are just IOUs. We do not have the money. But here is my answer: put the money back. If you just put the money back into Social Security, we will be okay. ____________________”