John Culberson: “I share my colleague from Georgia's passion and commitment to reduce the deficit to avoid passing on this debt to our…”

“I share my colleague from Georgia's passion and commitment to reduce the deficit to avoid passing on this debt to our children. This bill has bipartisan support. It has been put together very carefully to ensure that we're supporting our men and women in uniform, and I'm looking forward to finding ways to save money in other parts of the appropriations bill and in the parts of the budget that are actually, truly crushing our kids with debt and deficit. It's the social safety net that has grown so tremendously that is causing the greatest burden on our kids, the Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. The growth of these programs has been so astronomical it's swallowing up almost all of our national income on an annual basis. And that's where we need to focus our attention is saving those programs from bankruptcy. In fact, that's where we will really save the big money for our children in the future. Medicare is in such dire straits that if you're 54 years of age or younger, the Medicare hospital fund can only pay about 50 cents on the dollar of the benefits that have been promised. So the Medicare program, for all intents and purposes, for people that are 54 years of age or younger, is bankrupt. And the Social Security program, if you're 47 years of age or younger, that program is bankrupt because it can only pay about 60 cents on the dollar.…”