Marshall Sanford: “That begins with straightforward and honest accounting, which is what the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is…”

“That begins with straightforward and honest accounting, which is what the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is getting at. Looking at the numbers, by any family definition, if we had somebody living on our street that had to borrow from their retirement reserves to put gas in the car or food on the table, we would say that family was not running a surplus. Similarly, in the business world, if a businessman borrowed against his retirement reserves to pay for the current operations of the company, he would go to jail, based on Federal law. Yet that is what the Federal Government has been doing. So what is being talked about here is a first step of restoring confidence so that people will trust government and they will listen when we propose to them things about Social Security.”