Arlen Specter: “I appreciate the answer from my distinguished colleague from Texas. But I ask him if he would cut the Social Security…”

“I appreciate the answer from my distinguished colleague from Texas. But I ask him if he would cut the Social Security administrative costs which total some $6 billion or cut the Medicare administration costs or if he would cut the job training programs or student aid or Pell grants? I understand that, in posing this question to the Senator from Texas, it is not possible for him to give a very meaningful answer without having the list before him, but I suggest at the same time that when he says we could quadruple the accounts because we have $60 billion; we had $74 billion last year and the funding was very, very short. And contrary to what the distinguished Senator from New Mexico says, that we are just talking about expressing a wish and a hope, that the accounts are going to be set by the appropriators, that really is not so. When the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the full committee, sits down for the 602(b) allocations, what the Budget Committee has done will be very, very important. When the Senator from New Mexico says that we can make allocations, yet at the same time has stated that there are protected accounts on education that cannot be utilized for the health account, it is just a little bit inconceivable to this Senator how the Budget Committee comes up with the 550 account which is less than a freeze on last year's account.”