Don Nickles: “we need to wean ourselves and get off of this addiction to this and take that money and allow people to put it in their…”

“we need to wean ourselves and get off of this addiction to this and take that money and allow people to put it in their own account. That to me is a challenge. We shouldn't be sitting back and saying, ``Oh, we balance the budget. Aren't we proud of ourselves? We are doing good. We have a unified budget.'' I think we should have a unified budget. But I think we should go back and let's balance the budget without using Social Security. Then let's allow people to take that amount of money and be able to put that in their own account. I might mention that in the 10 years, if we did that, there would be over $1.5 trillion that could go into individual accounts and we would have more constituents that would be happier with us than anything else we would do. We would do more to secure their retirement and their future than anything else we could do. I have even told the President's representatives. I said, if the President really wants to go down in history and show that he has done something significant, this change, this evolution of allowing at least part of Social Security to be funded as a defined contribution in a personal savings accounts would be an astronomically positive impact for not only this generation; I think it would be a positive impact for future generations, which history will record as having truly been a great thing to do for seniors, a very positive thing to do for future generations as well.”