Thomas Daschle: “today I join with Senator Dorgan and others in introducing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The…”

“today I join with Senator Dorgan and others in introducing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The amendment we are offering is identical to the one scheduled for markup in Judiciary Committee with one essential difference: Our amendment would protect Social Security by prohibiting the counting of Social Security trust funds toward balancing the budget. The amendment to be considered in Judiciary Committee is likely to be the same as the one offered last year. It simply requires a balanced budget by a date certain without any consideration of the effect that it would have on Social Security. We offered the amendment we are introducing today as an alternative in the last Congress. If the proponents of the Republican leadership amendment had accepted this single change, the amendment would have been sent to the States 2 years ago with resounding bipartisan support. Instead, they insisted on an amendment that in the year it claims to balance the budget will actually have a $104 billion deficit, masked by Social Security trust funds. We believe to enshrine the practice of using Social Security funds as a part of the calculation for a balanced budget is just wrong. So our amendment would simply delete the Social Security trust funds from the calculations in determining whether the budget is balanced. It would ensure that, for all perpetuity, Social Security will not be abused again to balance the budget.”