Albert Russell Wynn: “I rise this afternoon to lament the late great lockbox. You remember the lockbox. That was our promise not to spend…”

“I rise this afternoon to lament the late great lockbox. You remember the lockbox. That was our promise not to spend Social Security trust funds on anything other than preserving the solvency of Social Security. Well, this administration's budget breaks into the lockbox. It obliterates the lockbox. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the Republican budget spends $179 billion from the Social Security trust fund on other programs. You will hear quickly that this is because of the war. That is not true. The deficit that is forcing us to break into the Social Security trust fund, 43 percent of it is due to tax cuts, tax cuts for the very wealthy, tax cuts for corporations like Enron who stand to gain $254 million in tax breaks. I think that is wrong. When we had a surplus a year ago and when we did not have a war, tax cuts made sense. But now today, facing a war, facing a deficit, we cannot afford these tax cuts. It breaks a promise that we made to the working families of America, and I believe it is just plain wrong.”