Angie Craig: “There is the issue of Social Security. So important was it that the President declared it in his State of the Union…”

“There is the issue of Social Security. So important was it that the President declared it in his State of the Union Address as an effort to save Social Security. Yet, the President has not bothered to make one step in that direction. The Congress waited a year, but no plan came from the White House. Just as with the farm crisis, he has only managed to use it--not address it, much less solve it. Like the farm crisis, he sought to use it to turn attention from himself. Instead of buckling down, this President has traveled around; over half of the days of this year the President has been out of town. He has found time to travel, he has found time to go overseas, he has found time to fundraise; but he has not found time to send any one plan to save Social Security to the Congress of the United States, or any one plan to alleviate a farm crisis that is now emerging. Well, I suspect that if the solution to Social Security had been in Beijing, or Chile, or Ghana, or Uganda, or Rwanda, or South America, he might have found it there because that is where the President was. Why now, the last week that Congress plans to be in session, with a schedule that was established at the first of the year, did the President find his way back to the White House to sit and only threaten--threaten to veto here, threaten to veto there? Mr. President, are you planning to shut down the Government? Is it a plan for diversion? Is it a plan to hide?”