Political Quotes

“the leadership is currently considering a proposal to change the definition of debt subject to the debt limit. This proposal would create a new lower limit applying only to debt held by the public. This would exclude debt owed to government trust funds, principally the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. As chairman of the Speaker's debt limit task force in 1995 and 1996, I oppose this proposal. Ending the inclusion of debt held by government trust funds, what the general fund has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare, in the statutory debt limit is unwise for good fiscal reasons. I think that the proposal of creating two classes of debt will create opportunities for the manipulation of government accounts to disguise the true level of debt. This concern is not wholly theoretical. The Treasury has used some accounting gimmicks available in the past. As my debt limit task force report documented, the Treasury divested $39.8 billion from the civil service trust fund in November of 1995 to avoid bumping up against the statutory debt limit. Though the divestment was reversed after an increase in the debt limit, it put the retirement benefits of millions of government employees at risk while masking the true size of government obligations. If we change the debt ceiling to apply only to Wall Street debt, the same thing could happen to Social Security and Medicare.”