[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 26, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H10847-H10851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      POLITICAL HYPOCRISY ON THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND ISSUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to know that my Republican 
colleagues who spoke before me this evening basically showed, if you 
will, their hypocrisy on the Social Security issue.
  The bottom line is we all know that Republicans have always disliked 
Social Security, and now they are trying to have the American people 
believe they are suddenly the steadfast defenders of the Social 
Security program by essentially distorting their record on the issue of 
Social Security.
  Let there be no question about it: The Republicans have already spent 
at least $13 billion of the Social Security surplus. They are trying to 
give you the impression that somehow that is not the case, that they 
are going to balance the budget without using the Social Security 
surplus. The reality is they have already spent at least $13 billion of 
it with the appropriations bills that have already passed the House of 
Representatives.
  Tom Delay, the Republican Whip, said at one time, this was October 
1st in the Washington Times, ``I will not vote for any bill that spends 
any of the Social Security surplus.'' But his own Congressional Budget 
Office has repeatedly said, and we have said it over and over again, we 
need to say it as Democrats because of what the Republicans are trying 
to do to distort the record, Tom Delay's own Congressional

[[Page H10848]]

Budget Office has repeatedly said that Republicans have already spent 
$13 billion of the Social Security surplus on the Republican spending 
bills, on the appropriations bills.
  According to the CBO, their own Congressional Budget Office, 
Republicans are on their way to spending $24 billion of the Social 
Security surplus with the bills that they keep cranking out and sending 
to the President. I think the ultimate irony of it all is when the 
President vetoes these bills and basically sends them back, which means 
the money is not spent, they criticize the President and say he wants 
to spend the Social Security surplus.
  Well, how can he do that if he vetoes the bill? The bills that they 
send to him are the spending bills. When he takes his pen and crosses 
it out and says I will not spend that money and he sends it back, the 
money is not spent. So it is the President in vetoing these bills and 
saying look, I want to look at this entire budget. You show me how you 
are going to put together these 13 appropriation bills and what that is 
going to add up to in the end, because he is concerned that he does not 
want to spend any of the Social Security surplus, and in fact it is the 
Republicans by passing these spending bills and sending them to him 
that are in fact doing just that.
  Let me go beyond the immediate question of the issue of spending 
Social Security surplus, because I do not think there is any doubt that 
the Republican leadership has already done that. But they have always 
opposed the concept of Social Security. The members of this Republican 
leadership have repeatedly been on record as saying that they are 
opposed to or wanted to phase out or somehow suggest they do not like 
Social Security as a concept, as a system.
  The fact is that Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and the rest of the Republican 
leadership have a long track record, from either indifference to 
outright hostility, toward Social Security.
  Republicans wanted to eliminate guaranteed benefits for Social 
Security through various privatization schemes. We have not heard about 
that, but many, many in the Republican leadership have talked about the 
need to privatize Social Security, which, in my opinion, is the same 
thing as not having the system as a guaranteed government system. They 
have no plan to extend the life of the Social Security trust fund. They 
basically want to let it wither on the vine.
  We all know that if something is not done soon, at some point into 
the next 10 or 20 years the Social Security trust fund is going to 
start to run out of money. And where is their plan? Where is the 
Republican plan to extend the life of that program? The only person who 
has put forward a plan, or I should say the only prominent person who 
has put forward a plan to try to shore up Social Security over the long 
term, is the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who they 
basically distort what he says every night here.
  Once again, over the weekend he put forward and said that he wanted 
his long-term plan to shore up Social Security to be part of this 
budget agreement that he wants to work on with the Republicans, with 
the Congress, over the next few weeks. They just ignore that. They 
ignore the fact that Social Security needs to be fixed on a long term 
basis.
  You know, the amazing thing is the President's plan, if it were 
adopted, would basically extend the life of the Social Security trust 
fund by 15 years. The Republicans do not extend the life of that fund a 
single day.
  The other thing that I wanted to point out is very conveniently my 
colleagues on the other side forgot what they did for the last 6 months 
when they put together this $1 trillion tax cut bill that primarily 
benefited the wealthy Americans and the corporations and would have 
just obliterated any effort to try to provide the surplus for Social 
Security. In fact, the Republican tax plan, which the President wisely 
vetoed, would have sucked the surplus dry, leaving nothing for 
strengthening the Social Security trust fund or extending the life of 
the Medicare Trust Fund or modernizing Medicare with prescription drug 
coverage.
  When I go out and talk to my seniors, they are worried about the 
long-term impact, whether or not Social Security is going to be there. 
They are worried about whether Medicare is going to be there. They want 
to make sure that Medicare includes the prescription drug fund.
  If this Republican tax plan, passed by the Republicans in both houses 
with few if any Democratic votes, had not been vetoed by President 
Clinton, there would not be anything to discuss here, because any 
effort to modernize Medicare, provide for prescription drugs, to make 
sure that we could shore up and save Social Security over the next 30 
years, all that would have been out the window. They spent 6 months on 
that, and finally the President vetoed it. But they have forgotten. We 
do not hear about that anymore, because obviously it did not work and 
they are not getting any mileage out of it, so they do not talk about 
it anymore. Republicans voted for $1 trillion for tax cuts for the 
wealthy and the corporate special interests. Not one penny of that for 
Social Security.

  Let me just talk a little bit, because over the weekend the president 
reiterated once again the need to look at Social Security over the long 
term, to shore it up for the future.

                              {time}  1915

  He is the one that is out there talking about this. Basically what 
the President is saying is that any surplus that is generated, I am not 
talking about the Social Security Trust Fund and the surplus that is in 
there, but I am talking about the general revenue, the money that comes 
from one's income taxes and other fees that one pays the Federal 
Government, the general revenue surplus, which, because of the Balanced 
Budget Act, is going to continue to grow over the next 10 years, he is 
saying that that surplus, if any, because we are not sure if there is 
going to be any, but if there is some, he wants to take that general 
revenue money, that income tax money, and he wants to apply that or a 
good percentage of that to Social Security so that we have enough money 
over the long-term.
  Because my colleagues have to understand that, under the current 
system, if we continue the way we do, there will not be enough money 
for Social Security in another 20 or 30 years.
  Well, the President basically said in his weekly radio address over 
the weekend that he would send Congress legislation next week based on 
a proposal he first floated earlier this year, this is almost a year 
ago in the State of the Union address, to shore up Social Security with 
projected Federal budget surpluses.
  I quote, ``The American people deserve more than confusion, double-
talk, and delay on this issue'', Mr. Clinton said. ``It is time to have 
a clear straightforward bill on the table; and next week, I plan to 
present one, legislation that ensures that all Social Security payroll 
tax will go to savings and debt reduction for Social Security.''
  Now, what could be more clear. Here is the Democratic President who, 
in a long series of Democratic Presidents going back now to Franklin 
Roosevelt, is saying it is very important for us to look at Social 
Security over the long-term. My Republican colleagues do not even deal 
with the issue at all. It is not on the radar screen.
  The White House said over the weekend that its plan would extend 
Social Security solvency from 2034 when, under current projections, it 
would be able to pay only 75 percent of promised benefits, to the year 
2050, beyond the life-span of most of the 76 million Americans born in 
the 18 years after World War II.
  So what the President is saying is that, at some point, I guess it is 
about 30 years from now, we will not have enough money in this trust 
fund to pay but 75 percent of the Social Security benefits. So we have 
to do something. He is putting forth the plan that says what we can do 
to extend the trust fund to at least the year 2050.
  That may seem like a long time away, but for young people who are 
born now or who are in their twenties, that is when they will be 
reaching retirement age.
  Here, again, is a quote from Gene Sperling, who is the director of 
the White House's National Economic Council. He says, ``What we have 
tried to do is present what we feel is the most solid bipartisan, 
hopefully noncontroversial proposal to lock away

[[Page H10849]]

the Social Security surplus for debt reduction and use those interest 
savings to extend the solvency of Social Security.''
  Now, let me explain that a little more. What the President's proposal 
basically does is to pay down the debt so that the money is available 
for Social Security. The President has been talking for some time about 
the need to reduce the national debt and basically saying that, if we 
save money, and we do not spend money, we will be able to apply that to 
the national debt.
  The Clinton plan, again I am reading from the New York Times, this is 
Sunday, October 24, ``Mr. Clinton's plan is based on the idea that, by 
using the Social Security surplus to pay down the national debt, the 
government's interest bill will decline substantially. By the White 
House estimate, the government's interest expense will be $107 billion 
lower in 2011 than it would be if the Social Security surplus were not 
used starting this year to reduce the debt.

  ``Mr. Clinton's proposal would take the money saved, because of the 
lower amount of debt starting in 2011, and earmark it to shore up 
Social Security. From the years 2011 through 2015, the total savings 
and interest dedicated to Social Security would be $544 billion,'' Mr. 
Sperling said.
  ``And savings would continue accruing beyond 2015 at around $189 
billion a year. The savings would at first go to further reductions in 
the national debt.
  ``After the debt was paid off, around 2015, under the White House's 
scenario, this savings would continue to be transferred to the Social 
Security in the form of a government IOU that would later be redeemed 
to pay benefits.''
  The point of the matter is the beauty part of the President's 
proposal is that we are actually paying down the national debt, 
something that the Republicans claim they care about, but I do not see 
any action on it here. I do not see any efforts here to talk about the 
national debt. That is what the President is proposing to do. That is 
what his Social Security proposal would do, deal with this problem on a 
long-term basis.
  Instead, the Republicans, what do they do, they do not talk about the 
long-term needs of the Social Security program. They just keep spending 
and spending so that now the appropriations bills actually dip into the 
trust fund and use the Social Security Trust Fund again to finance 
regular operating funds for the next fiscal year.
  Now, I want to talk a little bit about this tax cut again that the 
Republican leadership and my colleagues on the other side sort of 
conveniently ignored in the last few days, in the last few weeks as we 
are talking about this budget. President Clinton vetoed this trillion 
dollar tax cut, which primarily benefited the wealthy corporations, for 
one simple reason; and that is, it wastes the surplus on special 
interest tax cuts instead of investing in the future of all Americans.
  What the President is trying to say is that, if we give back this 
huge tax cut primarily to the wealthy and to the corporations, what are 
we doing for the future of the country? Nothing.
  On the other hand, if we take his Social Security proposal and 
basically pay down the national debt, we are investing in the future. 
That is the point. What do we want to do? Do we want to give a quick 
giveaway to a few people, a few corporations, a few special interests, 
or do we want to invest money in the future so the money is there for 
Social Security in the future and so that, basically, the economy 
prospers.
  The Republican tax plan basically meant $46,000 per year for the 
wealthiest taxpayers, but only $160 per year for the average middle 
class people. Republicans lavish nearly $21 billion on special interest 
tax breaks for big business. Let us not forget how much of that was 
just tax breaks for big corporations.
  The Republican tax plan eats the surplus hold, preventing us from 
paying down a significant chunk of the $5.6 trillion national debt. 
Debt reduction, of course, is the best way to ensure that we continue 
our record economic expansion by keeping interest rates low. This was 
the President's economic plan, something that the GOP has basically 
rejected.
  The Republican plan also siphoned money away from other critical 
areas, especially for strengthening Medicare and for providing 
prescription drug plans to help seniors pay for the costs of life-
saving medication.

  Let me talk about that briefly again, because then we do not hear 
anything about the long-term plans that the Republicans have for 
Medicare, unless they want that to also wither on the vine like Social 
Security.
  Again, this week, I think it was Monday, the President at the White 
House had a press conference, talked about the need to push for a 
prescription drug benefit in the context of Medicare. His long-term 
proposal which was going to shore up Social Security also provided for 
revamping Medicare to provide for a prescription drug plan.
  This is very important to senior citizens. When I talked to the 
seniors in my district and even the people who are younger who know 
that eventually they are going to be senior citizens, they worry about 
how they are going to pay for prescription drugs. Most seniors do not 
have a prescription drug plan, or, if they do have a plan, they have 
huge co-payments. It does not pay for a lot of their expenses. We find 
a lot of seniors that just go without prescription drugs or take half 
of a prescription when it is prescribed by the doctor.
  What the President has basically said is that he wants to establish a 
new Part D benefit, very similar to Medicare Part B, where one pays a 
certain amount per month, and one gets half of all the costs of all of 
one's prescription drugs paid for.
  There may be a lot of different ways to pay for prescription drugs 
and provide a benefit under Medicare for it, but at least he is trying. 
He is talking about this. He has folded this into his long-term 
economic plan that includes shoring up Social Security.
  I do not hear anybody on the other side talking about it. I do not 
hear anybody on the other side suggesting that somehow they are going 
to deal with this problem on a long-term basis.
  So, again, it is the Democratic President, it is the Democratic Party 
that are talking about these issues that will in the long term benefit 
the average senior citizen. All we see on the other side is a 
Republican effort to spend money and take it out of Social Security.
  There is no question that there is a GOP strategy here that is a 
subterfuge and that is an effort to try to mask what is really going 
on.
  In an enlightened moment back in August, this is on Friday, August 6, 
in the New York Times, the Republican Whip, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. DeLay), who is basically running the show around here from what I 
can see, basically exposed what his real strategy was with spending the 
Social Security surplus. Basically what it is is to force the President 
to his knees, that is actually a quote, and spend the Social Security 
surplus. That is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is all 
about.
  He admitted publicly that he is misleading the public with his spend-
and-deceive budget strategy. That is what we are hearing is this 
deceitful strategy that is being played up here on the House floor day 
after day the last few days, the last week.
  What the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) basically confessed was 
that the Republican promise to join the Democrats in saving the budget 
surplus for Social Security was a blatant lie. He recounted in detail 
the Republican strategy.
  If I could, I will just go through this from the New York Times. `` 
`The plan', Mr. DeLay said, `was for Republicans to drain the surplus 
out of next year's budget and force the President to pay for my 
additional spending requests out of the Social Security surplus,' which 
both parties have pledged to protect.
  ```We are going to spend it and then some. From the get-go, the 
strategy has always been we are going to spend what is left', admitted 
Republican Whip Tom DeLay.

  `` `The Republican strategy', Mr. DeLay said, `will also force the 
President to sign the Republican parties spending bills for next year.' 
''
  He has not agreed to do so. He has been vetoing them. But they want 
him to sign because they want to spend the money and spend the Social 
Security surplus.
  Again, I go back to the New York Times from August 6: ``He'', the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) ``said that even if the spending 
swallowed up the budget surplus, the Republicans

[[Page H10850]]

had a plan to use various budgetary mechanisms that would allow them to 
say they had stuck to the strict spending caps they imposed in 1997, 
the Balanced Budget Act. We will negotiate with the President after he 
vetoes the bills on his `knees', Mr. DeLay said.''
  Well, I am going to go into some of those gimmicks that the 
Republicans are using, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is using to 
try to mask what they are really doing here by spending the Social 
Security surplus. But before I get into that, I wanted to give my 
colleagues some quotes from these Republican leaders where they talked 
about their long-term plans to get rid of Social Security.
  This is in 1984 when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the 
Majority Leader, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 21, 1984, 
said that ``Social Security was a bad retirement and a rotten trick on 
the American people.'' He continues, ``I think we are going to have to 
bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of 
time.'' That was the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the Majority 
Leader, in 1984.
  This is from CNN's Crossfire on September 27 of 1994, Michael Kinsley 
asked the gentleman from Texas, (Mr. Armey) the question: ``Are you 
going to take the pledge? Are you going to promise not to cut people's 
Social Security to meet these promises?'' The gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Armey) said, ``No, I am not going to make such a promise.''
  Lastly, this was in the same year, September 28 of 1994, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) said on a C-SPAN call show, ``I would 
never have created Social Security.''
  So do not believe these guys when they say that they are trying to 
make sure they do not spend the Social Security surplus. The gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Armey) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) have a 
long history of not being in favor of Social Security. That is what we 
are seeing. That is what ultimately will manifest itself here, because 
they do not have a long-term plan to deal with it other than to get rid 
of it.
  I talked a little bit before about these creative gimmicks that are 
being used by the Republican leadership to try to mask that they are 
really spending the Social Security surplus. I do not want to spend a 
lot of time on them, but I do want to talk a little bit about them this 
evening if I could.
  It is difficult when I talk to my constituents about these creative 
accounting gimmicks, because it sounds like a lot of bureaucracy and is 
very hard to explain the technicalities of what they are trying to do. 
But there are many ways creatively in this Congress that one can really 
mask what one is doing with the budget and how one is spending money 
and where it is coming from. We would have to probably spend hours to 
explain all the details about how they do it.
  But there was a very good article, if I could mention it this 
evening, Madam Speaker, on Saturday, October 16 in the Washington Post 
by Eric Pianan and George Hager where they talked about Congress making 
greater use of creative accounting. I think they kind of distilled some 
of these gimmicks and put them in some common-sense terms. So I just 
wanted to take a few minutes if I could to highlight some of those 
gimmicks in this article by these two gentlemen that was in the 
Washington Post again on Saturday, October 16.

                              {time}  1930

  They say the Nation's defense contractors will have to wait an extra 
week to get paid this year. Routine maintenance of Pentagon facilities 
will be considered emergency spending. To keep from cutting education 
and health programs, lawmakers plan to borrow $15 billion from next 
year's budget.
  So one of the ways that we can mask what we are doing with the budget 
is by declaring items emergency spending. We can say, oh, it is 
emergency spending so it does not count. That may sound crazy to my 
constituents and to the American public, but it is a fact. And what the 
Republicans have done is to declare a lot of things emergencies that 
really are not.
  The best example probably, as has been mentioned several times on the 
floor of the House of Representatives, is when they decided to declare 
the funding for the census that occurs every 10 years as an emergency. 
Well, how can something that is required by the Constitution, the 
Constitution says every 10 years we have to do a census, how can that 
be an emergency when we know 10 years in advance that we have to do it? 
Well, that is an example.
  I will go back to this article from the Washington Post. It says, 
``As a Republican controlled Congress struggles to complete work on the 
budget, it is relying to an unprecedented degree on creative accounting 
to boost spending beyond what its rules allow. All told, congressional 
budgeteers have manufactured an additional $46 billion to spend this 
year on defense, farms, education and other programs. The situation 
underscores the immense difficulty of writing budget discipline into 
law and how easy it is for Congress and the President to circumvent 
what are supposed to be ironclad limits designed to keep spending in 
check. Under the 1997 balanced budget agreement, the Federal Government 
was supposed to spend only $592 billion in the 13 bills funding 
government's daily operations this year. But Congress is on target to 
spend roughly $640 billion.''
  So the problem that the Republican leadership faces is that under the 
Balanced Budget Act, which we all adopted a couple of years ago, the 
spending for this year is supposed to be only $592 billion. In reality, 
they are spending about $640 billion, if we look at their budget. Well, 
we can see the discrepancies there and why it is necessary to come up 
with these accounting gimmicks.
  Again, I am reading from this Washington Post article. ``Independent 
budget experts on the right and the left say Congress is masking the 
true size of its spending binge and could create serious budget 
problems when the obligations for the delayed spending come due. The 
actions also call into question whether the government will realize 
soaring surplus projections, which depend heavily on Congress 
ratcheting down on spending.''
  So if we delay the spending and essentially go into next year's 
budget, ultimately this will come home to roost and we will have a 
bigger problem next year. What of course we do is, we do not have the 
surplus and we will not be able to generate the surplus that supposedly 
is going to be generated by this Balanced Budget Act we passed 2 years 
ago if we keep spending into it. That is exactly what they are doing, 
spending into the Social Security surplus to pay for these ongoing 
programs that they claim are not really being spent as part of the 
surplus. In reality, that is what they are doing.
  Going back to The Washington Post article again. ``To the extent this 
approach is effective, it creates a bigger hole that has to be filled 
the following year, said The Brookings Institution's Robert Reischauer, 
a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.'' And it is very 
shortsighted, is what he says. Obviously, it is shortsighted to keep 
delaying spending into next year.
  Just an idea of how they go about these sort of advanced 
appropriations. In recent years, and this is back to The Washington 
Post, for instance, ``Congress and the administration has balanced out 
their numbers by borrowing funds from future appropriations. Last year, 
Congress agreed to $11.6 billion of such advanced appropriations. This 
year congressional Republicans plan to borrow twice that amount, 
including funds for education, job training programs, and rental 
housing subsidies. That will make it even more difficult to keep 
spending down when they consider the same programs a year from now.
  ``With the approval of an $8.7 billion farm bill out this week,'' 
which was the week of October 16, ``Congress has declared a total of 
$22 billion in spending emergencies that also do not count against the 
budget limitations. Other such emergencies include spending for the 
2000 census, fuel assistance for the poor, and maintenance of Pentagon 
barracks and facilities.'' Again, these are these declared emergencies 
which basically make it so that we do not have to count it but the 
money is really spent.
  Finally, the article concludes that, ``Even with this more aggressive 
use of budget tactics, the Congressional

[[Page H10851]]

 Budget Office has estimated that lawmakers would still tap the Social 
Security surplus by anywhere from $13 billion to $20 billion. 
Republicans may have to resort to an across-the-board spending cut of 1 
to 2 percent to keep from doing that.''
  Now, let me get into that, if I could a little bit, Madam Speaker, 
because that is basically what we were hearing from the other side of 
the aisle tonight. They know they have spent this $13 to $20 billion of 
the Social Security surplus. They will not admit it, but it is a fact. 
It is in the Congressional Budget Office analysis. Everyone knows it. 
So now they are talking about this 1 percent. I think it was 1.4 
percent, but now they are talking 1 percent, so I guess they revised 
it, that they are trying to say they are going to implement as a way of 
getting around spending the Social Security surplus.
  Well, this is really just an admission of the fact that they have 
been caught red-handed dipping into the Social Security surplus. They 
are looking scrambling around to make up the difference with gimmicks 
and these across-the-board spending cuts. This plan to require a 1 
percent automatic budget cut, if the Office of Management and Budget 
certifies that spending would dip into Social Security, is really an 
admission by the chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), that Republicans have stuck their 
hands deep into the Social Security cookie jar. It is basically asking 
the Administration to save House Republicans from themselves.
  One of the other things that they did, which I thought was 
particularly interesting, was this idea to raid the tax refunds of the 
working poor. Every day we get a different gimmick. It is either 
emergencies, delayed spending, 1 percent across-the-board, and the one 
a couple of weeks ago was this idea of taking the earned income tax 
from the working poor and using that. Actually, their proposal would 
have delayed $7 billion worth of earned income tax payments to the 
working poor in order to fill the gaps in the budget.
  I do not know what they were thinking with that. Maybe that somehow 
the working poor, because they figured they do not have time to vote or 
do not have time to read the newspaper or something, that they were not 
going to notice that they did not receive their tax refund up front. I 
do not even know if they have dropped that. That may still be out there 
as another way or another gimmick of trying to somehow hoodwink the 
American people as to what they are really up to.
  Let me just say, though, because I have heard this 1 percent plan 
mentioned several times this evening by my Republican colleagues who 
spoke before me, that even that does not add up. They are pretending a 
1 percent across-the-board cut will do the trick and erase their $12 or 
$13 billion spending where they have dipped into the Social Security 
surplus. But even with that, they are still nearly $4 billion in the 
hole based on their own phony accounting. In reality, I say they are 
way on their way of dipping into even more and more of the Social 
Security surplus.
  As we see what develops over the next few days or the next few weeks 
here, I am sure we will all find that, in fact, they are spending even 
more, and they are going to go way beyond that $12 or $13 billion that 
has already been spent from the Social Security surplus and even spend 
more before they finally wrap up this budget process.
  Madam Speaker, I do not intend to spend a lot more time this evening, 
but I feel it is my obligation and that of my colleagues on the 
Democratic side to come here  every night and basically present the 
truth and expose this GOP hypocrisy on Social Security. I have never 
seen an effort by my Republican colleagues to basically come to the 
floor every night and somehow think that if they are going to keep 
saying this over and over again, that the President is dipping into 
Social Security or the Democrats want to dip into Social Security, that 
somehow it is going to be believed.

  They are even running these ads, very expensive ads, I should say, in 
a lot of the districts of my Democratic colleagues, accusing my 
Democratic colleagues of dipping into Social Security. I think the 
theory is if they tell the lie often enough that people will believe 
it; or if they spend enough money getting the message out, even though 
it is not true, people will believe it. I hope the people do not 
believe it. And certainly we will continue on this side of the aisle to 
expose the truth about what is really going on here and how much money 
is already being spent by the Republicans with their spending bills.
  The ultimate irony is that they keep coming and talking about how the 
President wants to keep spending money. Well, the President does not 
appropriate the funds. They are in the majority. The Republicans are in 
the majority in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate. 
They are in the majority. They send him the bills. If he vetoes the 
bills, the money is not spent. That is the constitutional process.
  So for the life of me I do not understand how any of them can suggest 
that by the President vetoing a bill that somehow he is spending the 
Social Security surplus, when all he is saying is that the money cannot 
be spent. If he vetoes the bill, the money is not spent. The only way 
the money is spent is if they appropriate the money and he signs the 
bill.
  So the whole process, the whole way they go about describing the 
process, is basically not true. And I think it is incumbent upon myself 
and others to come here every night and to explain what is really going 
on here in this Republican effort and their inability to adopt a budget 
that does anything but spend the Social Security surplus.

                          ____________________