Kent Conrad: “let me say I find this argument very interesting because the principle is identical. In 1990, we had a vote on the floor…”

“let me say I find this argument very interesting because the principle is identical. In 1990, we had a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate to separate out the Social Security trust fund from the rest of the Federal budget. The Senator from Utah voted in favor of separating out the Social Security trust fund. Today, he says we ought to enshrine in the Constitution the reverse principle, that we ought to put them together, that the Social Security trust fund ought to be married to the rest of the Federal budget. What is wrong with that principle is what was wrong with it in 1990, and what I believe 98 Senators said, that we are not going to merge the two, we will not count the Social Security trust fund with the rest of the budget, because it is a risky financial move to put the two together. It masks the size of the deficits in the early years, and in the later years creates a whole series of other problems.”