On the recordMarch 31, 2011
My friend makes a good point. In fact, by law, the Social Security system and its pluses and minuses and the Federal Government's budget and its pluses and minuses must be separate. So by definition, by law, the two are separate. Social Security has its liabilities and assets, a big pile of assets over here, and the Federal Government has its liabilities and assets. The twain don't meet. One would think, particularly those who are saying privatize, that their opposition or desire to include Social Security in large-scale budget deficit talks, which we need and which are good--and I commend the group of six for moving forward in this direction--one would think that is an ideological agenda because they simply don't like Social Security and want to change it, privatize it, whatever, rather than any motivation about the deficit. Then when we see that some of them may want to extend tax breaks for millionaires permanently, which would increase the deficit by a huge amount, and yet at the same time they say: Let's deal with Social Security, let's privatize it, which doesn't have anything to do with the deficit, one scratches one's head and says: I don't think deficit reduction is what is going on here.
