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 in my local press, that there is going to be a $1.6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years.

The only problem with that is it is not really true. We are not going to have a $1.6 trillion surplus, and the talk about that surplus I find 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 it is going to get us to the point where we are not going to get to the balanced budget that we have worked so hard for over the past 7 or 8 years.

It is important to explain these figures. So 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. It is just an unusual way of accounting that they do back here in Washington, D.C.

Somehow, if we borrow money from a bank or from anyplace else, that counts as being borrowed, but if we borrow it from Social Security, it counts as income. Well, that is not true, because, just like the bank and like 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. Well, 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 trust fund on something else, we do 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 eighties and early nineties 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 time Democrats were in the 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 1990's, 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 need not to back away from it.

I understand with 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, and rarely does someone come by my office and present an 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 is the money going to come from? That is when you get to hard decisions.

No one likes to make hard decisions, so what we want to do is we want to say we can take it 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 that 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 okay. We are headed in the right direction. But we do 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 years. Almost all of that money is taken from the Social Security trust fund, 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 pay the money back.

I strongly urge this body in the last four or so weeks that we have in session here to not break down from our commitment. We have worked so hard to get to 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.