Harry Reid: “I can remember when I raised the first objection to that during the time Senator Mitchell was majority leader…”

“I can remember when I raised the first objection to that during the time Senator Mitchell was majority leader, indicating in my amendment that if we were going to have a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, then we should not count Social Security surpluses. We were able to prevail in defeating that mischievous amendment which would have locked into the Constitution this, in my opinion--it is my word--``phoney'' way to balance the budget, using these huge Social Security surpluses for people to say we had a balanced budget when we really did not. For many, many years the Social Security surpluses were used to mask the deficit. During the last 3 years of the Clinton administration, we decided to no longer do that, that we would have an honest budget process whereby you would not count the Social Security surpluses. We were able to have a balanced budget not using that method of accounting. In fact, we were able to pay down this huge debt that accumulated to some more than $5 trillion. So I have some disappointment that the budget sent to us by President Bush now goes back to using that same method of accounting, using the Social Security surpluses to mask the deficit.”