Kent Conrad: “If I might talk, for just a moment, on the reasons I voted in opposition to this budget resolution after these long…”

“If I might talk, for just a moment, on the reasons I voted in opposition to this budget resolution after these long hours of work. I would sum it up in the following ways. No. 1, I wanted to do more debt reduction than we ultimately did here. I wanted to reserve 70 percent of the forecasted surpluses for debt reduction. Unfortunately, we fell well short of that. So my first concern with what we passed is there is not sufficient debt reduction. My second concern is that after a detailed analysis of all the amendments that have passed, we are into the Medicare trust funds in the years 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007, to the tune of $54 billion. As I enunciated when I laid down a budget alternative, I do not think we should use any of the trust funds of Social Security or Medicare for any year. So that would be the second reason I voted in opposition.”