Ron Kind: “last year we passed a budget that boasted a ten-year unified surplus totaling $5.6 trillion. The leadership claimed that…”

“last year we passed a budget that boasted a ten-year unified surplus totaling $5.6 trillion. The leadership claimed that an expensive tax cut plan and other costly initiatives were eminently affordable and would leave enough of the budget surplus to eliminate most or all of the national debt. Thus Congress passed a tax cut costing $1.3 trillion. Unfortunately, since then, most of that surplus has disappeared, due to the war on terrorism, homeland security, the economic downturn in the economy, and most significantly, the large tax cut. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently projected that the budget surplus decreased this year by $4 trillion. Now, the leadership wants to make the $1.3 trillion tax cut, due to expire in 2010, permanent. This extension will cost over $4 trillion and will severely undermine the Social Security and Medicare trust funds just as 77 million baby boomers begin to retire. In fact, it will spend the entire Medicare surplus and 93 percent of the Social Security surplus in the next five years. Given the current forecasts, it appears that permanent tax cuts mean permanent deficits. Furthermore, the House passed legislation five times vowing that every single dollar of the Social Security and Medicare trust fund would be saved. And be put into a ``lockbox''. Now they are going back on their word, and spending the very money that people who are working now are counting on for their retirement security.”