Kent Conrad: “Mr. President, let me be clear. The amendment I am offering says this: No new mandatory spending, no new tax cuts unless…”

“Mr. President, let me be clear. The amendment I am offering says this: No new mandatory spending, no new tax cuts unless they are paid for until we stop using Social Security money for other purposes. It guards that budget discipline with a supermajority point of order. That is how we have worked in the past with the pay-go provision, focused on mandatory spending and on the tax side of the ledger. It is not different from what we have done in the past. Some have said it does not discipline discretionary spending. We have never disciplined discretionary spending with this kind of mechanism. We have done that with spending caps, and we have in place today a spending cap. I have supported spending caps to discipline the discretionary side of the spending. Remember, mandatory spending is two-thirds of Federal spending, and we have nothing in place now to protect us on the revenue side or the mandatory spending side. That is what this amendment does. If we look at the President's budget, it is very interesting what we see. Over the next 10 years, he is taking every penny of the Social Security surplus and using it to pay for other items. What are the other items he is paying for? One is his income tax cuts. There will be a $2.4 trillion Social Security surplus over the next 10 years. By the way, it is not surplus at all. It is a misnomer because we are going to need that money when the baby boomers retire.”