Barney Frank: “Not simply are they showing their values, but they said, Oh, you're going to give $250 to Warren Buffett on Social…”

“Not simply are they showing their values, but they said, Oh, you're going to give $250 to Warren Buffett on Social Security. They want to give $250,000 to Warren Buffett, which, to his credit, he doesn't want. In fact, the reason we are in this bind is, in 2001 and 2003, George Bush and the Republican majorities wanted to pass very large tax cuts despite their professed concern about the deficit--and we now see from this bill that their slogan is ``deficit-schmeficit''--but they didn't want to admit how much it would cost, so the CBO couldn't give us the full value of the cost. They made very bad tax policy. They did it. I voted against it. They made major changes in the Tax Code to end after 10 years, and they did that Humpty Dumpty roller coaster with the estate tax. That wackiness was their effort to hide the true amount of the hole they were burning in the deficit, so they have only themselves to blame. But let me return. They couldn't afford $14 billion to give $250 payments to Social Security recipients--and overwhelmingly, they killed it when we tried to pass it--but they can take $114 billion out of Social Security.”