Judd Gregg: “No, we are not using Social Security. If I may restate the point, CBO numbers, which came out on July 15, showed fairly…”

“No, we are not using Social Security. If I may restate the point, CBO numbers, which came out on July 15, showed fairly definitively that there is a surplus, independent of the Social Security trust fund, of approximately $169 billion. The Senator may not accept those numbers. He may not like those numbers. He may feel those numbers are inaccurately, inappropriately arrived at. But those are the numbers which we have been given. Which leads to the secondary point, because the numbers are really almost irrelevant to the debate. It leads to the secondary point here, which is the key point, which is that there is a potential to give the American taxpayers a tax cut. Let's give it to them. Let's lock in the statement, ``We want to give a tax cut, if there is a surplus in excess of what we need to benefit the Social Security system and make it solvent.'' Why would we walk away from the opportunity to say to the American taxpayer, ``If we can make the Social Security system solvent, after we have done that, if we have extra money, we are going to give you a tax cut?'' Why would we ever want to walk away from such a statement?”