Harry Reid: “What has concerned me a great deal is the President and his Director of Budget Mitch Daniels talking about this great…”

“What has concerned me a great deal is the President and his Director of Budget Mitch Daniels talking about this great surplus we have, the second largest surplus in the history of the country. They failed to mention the surplus is all Social Security surplus. Of course, we have a surplus because Social Security is not something that is funded as we go along. We forward fund Social Security. We have huge amounts of money coming into the Social Security trust fund today that we are not paying out. That is the way it was planned in 1983 when there was a compromise reached by Tip O'Neill, Ronald Reagan, Claude Pepper, and a few others. So people, including the President of the United States, who talk about this huge surplus are not being fair to the American public. We do not have a surplus. The surplus is a Social Security surplus. The economy is in a tremendous downturn. This country's tax revenues are significantly lower than they have been in a long time.”