Political Quotes

“Social Security is developing into an issue which more and more people are realizing has very serious consequences. We are talking about the question now of should we continue to dip into the Social Security trust fund to use for current other Government spending. What I want to talk about is how do we keep Social Security solvent, and is there a currently a real problem with Social Security? As we see by this first chart, Social Security is now the largest spending item in the Federal budget. This past year it was $347 billion larger than the defense bill, larger than the other 12 discretionary spending bills, of course larger than Medicaid or Medicare or the other entitlements. Interest on the public debt, and that interest includes the money that has been borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, now takes up 15 percent of the Federal budget. Our birth rate is going down and people are living longer, and that means that the expense that we are paying into the cost of Social Security is going up. Right now we are spending $661,000 a minute to pay Social Security benefits.”