John Shaw: “I noted that two speakers on the Committee on Ways and Means have again gotten up and said something about invading the…”

“I noted that two speakers on the Committee on Ways and Means have again gotten up and said something about invading the Social Security Trust Fund. Even when the Democrats had control of the House of Representatives and were awash in deficit spending, and that was even over and above spending all of the Social Security surplus, not once was the trust fund invaded. It cannot be invaded by law because, by law, there are Treasury bills that are put into the trust fund and they remain there until they are needed to be cashed in in order to pay benefits. Nobody has invaded the trust fund, period, not from the beginning of the system when it was first put in place. So let us put that aside. We can argue as to the value of Treasury bills when it is a debt by the government to the government, but that stays intact. We can talk also for a moment about the Democrat alternative. We have heard a lot about bipartisanship. No one called me from the other side to ask me what I would like to see in this bill; even though the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and I are very close friends, he never asked for my advice.”