Mark Neumann: “Just to expand on that a little bit, exactly how this would work, what we do is after we balance the budget we cap the…”

“Just to expand on that a little bit, exactly how this would work, what we do is after we balance the budget we cap the growth of Washington spending at a rate 1 percent under the rate of revenue growth, at least 1 percent, it might be even more. In English let me translate that into a picture here. If spending is going up, that is the red line, at a slower rate than the revenue is going up, we have capped the growth of spending at a slower rate than the growth of revenue. That creates this surplus in here. The surplus is used two-thirds to pay back that Federal debt. Now part of that Federal debt is that money you are talking about that is supposed to be in the Social Security trust fund. Every year the government is taking in more money for Social Security than what it is paying back out to our seniors in benefits. That extra money is supposed to be set aside in a savings account so when there is not enough money coming in for the seniors we go to the savings account, get the money and make good on the Social Security checks. Unfortunately all of that money has been spent, and that trust fund, that savings account, is now all part of that $5.3 trillion debt. Now, as we put this plan into place and the surplus develops, what happens is we start paying that debt down, and as we are paying the debt down the money is put back into the Social Security trust fund, making Social Security once again solvent for our senior citizens.”