Tom Coburn: “One of the reasons that I believe that the gentleman objected to our unanimous consent request is that it is hard to…”

“One of the reasons that I believe that the gentleman objected to our unanimous consent request is that it is hard to hear about spending Social Security money. It is not palatable to politicians. This chart shows exactly the fallacy of what Washington is telling the American public about surpluses. Here, in green, is what Washington is saying is the surplus. The red shows the rise in the national debt each year. The question that I would have for our body is, if we have a surplus, why is the debt rising? Why did the debt rise $105 billion last year? Why are our children going to be burdened with an additional $1,000 per person just on the basis of what we did last year? Congress has a moral obligation to our troops, to restore our military readiness, and we also have a moral obligation to our farmers, who are dependent on us. But we also have a moral obligation not to spend Social Security money. Probably that is not right. We have a moral obligation to be truthful about whether or not we are going to spend Social Security money.”