John Spratt: “I yield myself 3 minutes before yielding to others to talk about debt and Social Security because the two, believe it or…”

“I yield myself 3 minutes before yielding to others to talk about debt and Social Security because the two, believe it or not, are critically linked. Every year when the President sends us his budget, the Congressional Budget Office does an analysis of the President's budget and applies the President's budget to its baseline for the economy and extends it over a 10-year period of time. I have a copy here in my hands of the CBO estimate of the President's budget for fiscal year 2005. If there is nothing else my colleagues read in this rather laboriously written report, I recommend to my colleagues table 1, chapter 1, and I recommend to them the very last column because in the very last column, at the top of it, we have a CBO estimate of how much will be added to the national debt, the statutory debt, if the President's budget, which is basically the same as the Republican budget on the floor now, is implemented and carried out. The number is $5.132 trillion. That is the estimate of the statutory debt increase that will result from the adoption of the President's budget, $5.132 trillion in additional debt.”