Kent Conrad: “No, I will not. That is precisely what we should not do. That is going back to the bad old days around here of using…”

“No, I will not. That is precisely what we should not do. That is going back to the bad old days around here of using Social Security money to balance the budget. That is going back to the bad old days of raiding Social Security, of looting Social Security to make it look as if we have balanced the budget. Why ever would we want to go back to that approach? We have just spent years convincing our colleagues and the American people that we should not count Social Security surpluses to balance the operating budget of the United States. Now we have an amendment from a colleague that suggests we ought to go back to the bad old days and we ought to raid Social Security to balance the budget. I hope we will not go in that direction. I hope we will continue on the path of reserving every penny of Social Security for Social Security. Let's not, please, colleagues, go back to defining a balanced budget as one that raids the Social Security surpluses in order to achieve balance. That would be a profound mistake. Instead, I hope we take the second-degree amendment I have offered that says let's make the top priority debt reduction, let's take every penny of the Social Security surplus and dedicate it to Social Security, and let's take the biggest chunk of the non-Social Security surplus and use it to pay down debt.”