Lizzie Fletcher: “as we look back over the history of this body for 40 years, since the mid sixties we have been spending the money that…”

“as we look back over the history of this body for 40 years, since the mid sixties we have been spending the money that individuals have paid in their payroll for Social Security and for Medicare. We have been spending it on other government programs. I remember 2 years ago, my first year here in Congress, the gentleman from California proposed this and we began the first lockbox to set aside Social Security. I can remember some Members were making light of it and saying it was not a real lockbox, and it had a hole in the bottom of it. That first year I was here 2 years ago we did not spend one penny of Social Security money. The lockbox worked. It kept us disciplined so we did not spend that Social Security. We did it last year with Medicare, and we are repeating it again this year. Some folks are concerned that we have allowed the use of this Social Security money and Medicare money to be used for reform. We have to face the fact that if we do not make some changes in improving and modernizing these programs to meet the needs of an aging population, we are going to run into serious problems. Sticking our head in the sand does not work. Using rhetoric for political reasons does not solve the problems we are going to be facing in the future.”