Kent Conrad: “Yes. I thank the Senator for remembering that. I did have a plan. Instead of giving the outsized tax cuts the President…”

“Yes. I thank the Senator for remembering that. I did have a plan. Instead of giving the outsized tax cuts the President proposed, I proposed giving a $900 billion tax cut, very large tax cuts, but to use the rest of the money to strengthen Social Security, to either prefund the liability or pay down the debt. Instead, a different judgment was made. Social Security money that really never was in what I would consider surplus--because it is all needed when the baby boomers retire--has been taken and has been used, every dime under the President's fiscal plan, to pay other bills and to finance tax cuts. I think that was a profound mistake. That is why I offered the amendment the Senator from Kentucky has now offered, an amendment I offered back in 2002, to prevent us from ever going down this path. Now we have gone down it. Both budgets, if we are to be honest, use Social Security funds. We use somewhat less than the President's budget. It is going to take time to dig out.”