Tom Coburn: “So even with the hard work we have done in trying to restrain spending since the three of us came to Congress, the…”

“So even with the hard work we have done in trying to restrain spending since the three of us came to Congress, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), and myself, Federal Government spending has still, including this budget that we just passed, risen 20 percent. Over $300 billion a year, us fighting with all our energy to try to limit spending, it has still gone up by that. So it is very important that this concept of restraining spending be helped. I want to get back to Social Security just for a minute, if we can, because the other thing that is important, and we talked about what is going to happen, is Social Security taxes. If we just let the tax rate rise on one's working wages, remember, this hurts middle income and lower income more than it hurts anybody because there is a maximum limit at which one pays Social Security taxes on. So what happens is the rate is going to go from this 12.5 percent to a rate of almost 20 percent as we get out into the next millennium, the next century. So if we take the fact that right now we are paying 12.5 percent, and we are going to take and almost double that rate of taxes on our children so that we double the amount of money that is coming out of their paycheck every month, we can see very easily what we are going to do is lower their standard of living. So it is a real problem. It is a problem we have to address.”