Rich Neal: “this is one of the details, when we come into this Chamber, that makes us really feel good about being Democrats. I have…”

“this is one of the details, when we come into this Chamber, that makes us really feel good about being Democrats. I have to tell the Members, when I hear speakers march to that microphone and suggest that this side is playing politics with social security, after they have scheduled the tax cut 6 weeks before the national elections, that we are playing politics? Do Members know what the name of this account they have offered today is? The Protect Social Security Account. It is Orwellian, that is really what it is, because only George Orwell would have suggested that we should protect social security by raiding it. That is precisely what they are doing today. For them to complain about politics, politics, 6 weeks before a national election, to offer a tax cut to the American people by raiding the social security account, that is politics. We ought to have a substantive debate in this Chamber about what we really mean by ``protecting social security,'' and spending it for a tax cut is not the way we protect social security. This bill that they are offering today locks up what they say is 90 percent of the social security trust fund. What about the Asian fiscal crisis? What about a recession that could loom on the horizon, and alter dramatically every fiscal projection we have seen in this Chamber for the last year? Are we blind to the realities of what is happening across the globe?”