That is the good news.  The bad news is that we are now looking like we are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The biggest part of this problem comes from the talk that we have heard here recently about a surplus.  I hear my colleagues talking about it, I see it on television, I even hear it on my local press, that there is going to be a $1.6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years.

The problem with that is it is not really true.  We are not going to have a $1.6 trillion surplus and I find the talk about that surplus very disturbing, because it puts us in a position to back away from our commitment to a balanced budget.  It gives us the illusion that we have money that we do not have, and I fear that is going to deter us from getting to the balanced budget that we have worked so hard for over the past seven or eight years.  

It is important to explain these figures.  If we are not going to have a $1.6 trillion surplus, why are so many people saying we are going to have a $1.6 trillion surplus?  It is because they count the money that we borrow from Social Security as income.  Well, that is not true, because, just like borrowing from the bank and any other source we have to pay the money back to Social Security, plus interest.

Now, you might say, well, so part of the $1.6 trillion surplus comes out of the Social Security trust fund.  That still gives us some money to play around with.

Unfortunately, when you look at the $1.6 trillion over 10 years, only $31 billion of that $1.6 trillion comes from any place other than the Social Security trust fund.  So we truly do not have a surplus.

Unless we are willing to spend money that comes directly out of the Social Security on something else, we don not have a surplus.  We cannot consider it a surplus, and we must be honest in the way we evaluate those numbers.

I find it particularly disturbing to hear some of my colleagues from the Republican side of the aisle talking about this surplus, because I remember back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s they were the ones who first raised the argument that this was unfair, that we were masking the true size of the deficit.

Now at the same time Democrats were int eh majority, so it was in their political interest to make that point, because it made us look bad.  I was very troubled by that argument at the time, and I was troubled by it as a Democrat for one very good reason: they were right and we were wrong.  We needed to address that issue and change it.  But now we are in the latter part of the 1990s.  They are in the majority, and now they are talking about a surplus, as if the Social Security trust fund was income that we could spend any way we want.

We need to stop doing that.  We need to be honest about the numbers and make sure that we stay on a path to a balanced budget.  A balanced budget is critical to this country.  It helps our economy and protects our future.  We must not back away from it.

I understand why we do this.  I have people come by my office every day who have ideas to spend money on a variety of programs or have ideas for tax cuts in a variety of areas.  Rarely does someone come by my office and present and idea where I can honestly say no, that would be a complete waste of money.  That would not do any good for anybody.

Yes, there are programs that can use more money and taxes that could be cut, but the point is, where it the money going to come from?  That is when you get to hard decisions. 

No one likes to make hard decisions, so instead we say we can take the money from the surplus.  That is the easy answer.  It is free money.  We can give you tax cuts, we can give you spending, everything you want, we can promise you the world, and we can simply take it from this mythical surplus.  So I understand why we want to do this, because it is an easy way out.

But we were not elected to take the easy way out.  We were elected to give people honest answers and give them an honest assessment of where the budget is.  And the honest assessment is that we are doing OK.  We are headed in the right direction.  But we don not have a surplus this year, and we do not have that $1.6 trillion projected surplus that we have heard so much about over the last 10 months.  Almost all of that money is taken from the Social Security trust fund: It is borrowed from it.  It is not money that we can spend, for the very good reason that we have to give it back.  We have to give it back, plus interest.  And if we have spent it, we are going to run up debts or not be in a position to bay the money back.

I strongly urge this body in the last few weeks that we have in session here to not break down from our commitment.  We have worked so hard to get a balanced budget.  Let us get there.  Let us be honest about the numbers, and let us stop using the money that we borrow from Social Security to mask the true size of our deficit.