Charles W. Stenholm: “I have no argument with this resolution. I do have a problem with hypocrisy. Where has the majority been for the last 6…”

“I have no argument with this resolution. I do have a problem with hypocrisy. Where has the majority been for the last 6 months? The Blue Dogs put a budget on this floor 6 months ago which was not just a meaningless, nonbinding, feel-good piece of rhetoric like today's resolution. Our budget laid out concrete strategies for doing what this resolution pretends to do: Protect Social Security with a real lockbox, fix Social Security and Medicare long term and do it now. Where have we been the last 6 months? If the majority really embraced the tenets of today's resolution, they would have come on board the Blue Dog budget 6 months ago. The gentleman is correct, we have a budget. The only problem is, that budget has already spent Social Security surpluses. We have already done it. How can we stand on the floor and make speeches like we are not going to do it when we have already done it? I do not understand this rhetoric. Instead, we keep having devised scorekeeping and bookkeeping gimmicks which allow us to pretend that we kept the budget caps but which in fact have already invaded Social Security funds. When are we going to stop playing games and get serious? When are we going to have an honest effort at fixing Social Security and Medicare first and stop this endless speechifying on this floor about what we should do and the desire to do? Where have we been?”