David Minge: “I would like to address this body about the condition of the budget resolution that Congress is supposed to have passed…”

“I would like to address this body about the condition of the budget resolution that Congress is supposed to have passed several months ago. Indeed, it was supposed to have been completed on April 15th, and, here we are, we are in the last seven days of September, and we still have no budget. Now, there are some that say, what is the worry? Is the budget not balanced? Can we not forget about having a Federal budget resolution that sets the spending levels for the various programs that we operate as a government? I submit we cannot. There is good news. It does appear that if you only look at what is called the unified budget, which includes some surplus in the Social Security program, indeed we will have a surplus. But if you back out this borrowing from the Social Security program rather than the surplus, it now appears that we will have a deficit in the neighborhood of $70 billion. It does not make sense, Mr. Speaker, for us to continue to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund, to take those payroll taxes that Americans are paying into the Social Security program and that their employers are matching, and to use part of that to operate the Federal Government. When we say we have a surplus, we should reserve that phrase for the situation where we are no longer borrowing from the Social Security program. No, we do not have a surplus. We have a deficit this year. We need a budget resolution.”