Kent Conrad: “If I can just complete the thought? Then I got the document the next morning. I got the document the next morning. It…”

“If I can just complete the thought? Then I got the document the next morning. I got the document the next morning. It was their draft of how they said they could protect Social Security funds. I met with legal experts from the Budget Committee, from the Congressional Research Service, and they said this is not going to protect anything because a constitutional amendment supersedes any statute. So when we hear the other side here today say they had a plan to phase out using Social Security trust funds, it was not an effective plan. It was not a plan that had legal force and effect --at least according to the constitutional experts that I talked to. They told me very clearly that what they were offering was eyewash. It made it look like they were going to do something or were willing to do something, but it would not have legal force and effect. That is, I believe, the review of what happened last week. For the other side to now say they had no intention of using Social Security funds--please, that is just not the case. It is clearly not the case. They had every intention of using $1.3 trillion of Social Security trust fund surpluses by the year 2008. It would have been about $2 trillion if we had taken their first offer to stop using the funds by 2012.”