Kent Conrad: “Social Security is clearly in danger. Clearly, the priority on the other side is a tax cut, a massive tax cut at all…”

“Social Security is clearly in danger. Clearly, the priority on the other side is a tax cut, a massive tax cut at all costs. That is their priority. Looking at this budget, the budget that is before us, the major problem with it is that it does not represent the priorities of the American people. I think the best way to understand this is we now have projected a surplus over the next 10 years of $2.6 trillion. Our friends on the other side say all of the non-Social Security surplus-- virtually all of it--ought to go for a tax cut. Nothing, not a dime out of that surplus is for Medicare--not a dime--even though it is in greater danger than Social Security. They do not have the resources available for the high-priority domestic concerns of education, health care, defense, because if you look over time, they are going to have massive cuts in those categories. They are disguised, they are hidden, but they are there. Mr. President, I think perhaps it would be useful to recount a little bit of the budget history, how we got to where we are today and where we are headed. This chart shows over the last 30 years the budget history of the United States at the Federal Government level. We can see the last time we had a surplus was back in 1969, a little bitty surplus of $3 billion. We bumped along. Then we got into the seventies and the deficits started rising. Then we got into the Reagan years and the deficits exploded.…”