Jim Baird: “it is time for this body and for our President to level with the people of the United States of America. Just a couple…”

“it is time for this body and for our President to level with the people of the United States of America. Just a couple of years ago when people ran for office, we were all talking about the Social Security and Medicare lockbox. We need to be honest with the American people and say that that lockbox has been opened up. It has been turned upside down and every penny's been shaken out of it. When we hear talk these days about the budget deficits, those deficits are masked and artificially lowered because we are unfortunately, once again, borrowing from Social Security and Medicare. My colleagues will hear various talks about what the deficit is. Often times they will hear that the unified deficit is, let us say, for example, $304 billion for next year or $307 billion for the following year. The only way we arrive at those figures, which are admittedly very substantial, is by borrowing from Social Security and Medicare. Were it not for that borrowing, what would the real deficits be? The real deficits for next year or for this year would be $468 billion. For next year, they would be $482 billion; and that is without budgeting for the cost of occupation of Iraq, nor is it for budgeting for the cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax, which this body should do. We need to be honest. We cannot run for office 1 year and say we are going to establish a lockbox and the next year pretend that we have not opened it as we have.”