Charles W. Stenholm: “What we are suggesting is that the conservative thing for this House to do is to make the tough calls on the budget and…”

“What we are suggesting is that the conservative thing for this House to do is to make the tough calls on the budget and put the tax cut within the confines of what we can agree in a bipartisan way is the blueprint that will allow our economy to continue to grow as it has in the past 7 years. We get very, very disturbed when we hear people talking about, well, there is a $4 trillion surplus, and we can give one-fourth of it back to the people because it is the people's money. If only that were true. Well, it is true, it is the people's money, but it is not true that we have $1 trillion to give back, unless we are prepared to say to the 55- to 65-year-olds today, ``We are going to let you worry about your social security check when it starts coming due in 2014. We are going to let you worry and let your children and grandchildren worry even more about it.'' The problem that many of us have with expenditures, spending programs, of which we are also opposed to the creation of new entitlement programs, very strongly. We should not create new spending programs, any more than we should have massive tax cuts at this time, based on projected surpluses. Here are the numbers, a $4 trillion surplus. $2 trillion of it is social security. Fine. Put that towards paying down the debt.”