John Spratt: “The gentleman made a very significant point a minute ago, namely, in 2001, we stood at the fork of the road. Prior to…”

“The gentleman made a very significant point a minute ago, namely, in 2001, we stood at the fork of the road. Prior to Mr. Bush coming to office, we were on the cusp of adopting a very conservative economic policy which would have called upon us to forswear ever again spending anything in the Medicare or Social Security Trust Funds except for those benefits, and using the funds in the meantime solely to buy up outstanding debt, not newly issued debt, but outstanding debt so that over a period of about 10 years we could have just about paid off the debt held by the public, and therefore, Treasury would have been interest free, would have had no interest obligation to pay to the public at a time when the baby boomers began to come to the Treasury or at least assert their demands for benefits which they had been promised and draw down their benefits. The Treasury would be in a more solvent situation than it has been in since the Second World War.”