John Thune: “Last year, the Republican Congress did the right thing. We said that we are going to rope off social security and make…”

“Last year, the Republican Congress did the right thing. We said that we are going to rope off social security and make sure it does not get spent for other purposes, because for far too long in this Congress social security and Medicare surpluses and trust funds have been Washington's cookie jar to fund all these other programs in government. We said last year, categorically, this has to stop. The American people deserve better, our seniors deserve better. We made that commitment with social security. Unfortunately, the legislation has been stalled in the Senate, yet we need to move forward to ensure that we have the same level of protection for Medicare, and that is what this legislation would do today. Hopefully we can get action on the social security lockbox as well as the Medicare lockbox. Last year, Mr. Speaker, the Federal government dipped into Medicare by about $21 billion to fund unrelated government spending in other areas. We do not need bigger government and we do not need to finance bigger government with social security and Medicare payroll taxes, taxes that people pay with the expectation that those programs are going to be there some day for them.”