Max Baucus: “basically, this amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma is just unnecessary. In fact, he used my chart. My chart…”

“basically, this amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma is just unnecessary. In fact, he used my chart. My chart makes a case that is much worse than would occur under the bill. I am just trying to present the facts so people can make a reasonable judgment. I looked at the balance on a year-by-year basis. That is what that chart shows. Under the bill before us, there is a 10-year rolling average lookback which means that lower level on the chart would never get that low under the bill. The Senator from Oklahoma wants to change it from 10 to 5. Even 5 will not get that low. The main point is that many people have looked at this issue from different directions and have concluded that this legislation is a good way to deal with the excess balance in the railroad retirement trust fund. By increasing some benefits, by lowering taxes, and yet building in some automatic auditing devices, that comports with requiring the actuary to report whether the trust fund is actuarially sound in the current year and succeeding years under various economic assumptions. I do not know how much better we can do than that. It is very difficult to predict the future. I remind my colleagues that CBO, in trying to make 10-year estimates, let alone the 20 years we are talking about here, has varied its 10-year totals by $1 trillion over a 6-month period of time. It is because economic assumptions change so quickly, so often.”