Tom Coburn: “Let us spend a little time and tell why it is important that we start being honest with the American public. Even with…”

“Let us spend a little time and tell why it is important that we start being honest with the American public. Even with the latest numbers that most people in America have read with social security's outflow-inflow changing by 1 year to the year 2014, what we can see is the bars in black represent more money coming into social security than we are paying out. We can see until the year 2014 we are going to be doing okay. We are going to have more money coming into social security than we are actually going to pay out, so there is cash there that the Federal Government has. It is smart to borrow that and pay off external debt. I do not deny that that is a smart thing to do. But it does not lower the total debt that our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back. It is an untruthful statement to say that it lowers our debt. It does not. It just lowers that portion of the debt that the public holds, that Japan holds, that Switzerland holds, that Germany holds. It just lowers that percentage and shifts more IOUs to the social security system. What is important about fixing social security, and fixing it on the basis that we are going to start being truthful about the surplus, we are going to be truthful about the surplus in the social security account, which is totally different than the surplus for the Federal Government, is that look what happens after the year 2014.”