Political Quotes

“Let me, if might, respond quickly to that question and then ask another question. The thing that is disturbing to me, as I reflect on Rev. Jim Bakker, Rev. Jim and Tammy Bakker--and I think everyone remembers the PTL Club show that was on. I can remember saying in one of our Budget Committee meetings during our deliberations, ``Does anybody remember why Jim Bakker is in a Federal prison?'' Nobody could remember the exact details, but fundamentally he is there because he promised to raise money for one reason and then used it for another purpose. That is precisely what we are doing to Social Security today--not in the future, today. We are telling people we put that payroll tax on in order to fund Social Security. And, indeed, we are funding part of Social Security that way. But we are also funding the operating expenditures of the rest of the Federal Government by running a Social Security surplus and taking the money and using it for another purpose. By those tests that were applied to Rev. Jim Bakker, all of us would be in a Federal penitentiary. I find it disturbing that for the foreseeable future Social Security is in surplus, and under the terms of the amendment we have before us, we would achieve a balance but only achieve a balance because we would be using the Social Security trust fund to make that balance.”