John Thune: “This is a honest budget. This says to the American people that we are going to set aside Social Security and Medicare…”

“This is a honest budget. This says to the American people that we are going to set aside Social Security and Medicare taxes, payroll taxes, and leave them there, lock them up, wall them off and not touch that because the surplus that we are running today, most of it is in Social Security and Medicare and the payroll tax side of the budget. After that is done, after those dollars are walled off and we get into the future years when there are surpluses on the overall budget, in other words, coming off the income tax and other sources of government revenue, then we can engage in a debate in this Chamber, in the Congress, about how best to use those revenues. Now our side happens to believe we said in our plan that we think we would like to see those dollars go back in the form of tax relief because the American people worked hard to produce those dollars, and they ought to be able to keep more of what they earn.”