So, when we hear the other side talking about how they are setting aside $1.4 trillion for Social Security, we cannot set aside money that is already spoken for. That money is borrowed. It must be paid back, plus interest.

We would not borrow $200,000 for a home mortgage and say we are setting that aside for our child's education, because we have to pay it back. That is the fundamental flaw in the Republican argument. The money is already in the Social Security trust fund. We should keep it there.

We saw that chart that the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) brought up. We saw the truth. The only surplus that exists outside the Social Security trust fund, which we have to pay back, is $31 billion. Now, if they wanted to be honest and offer a bill to say we should set aside 90 percent of the real surplus, 90 percent of $31 billion would make sense, because that is the only surplus that we have.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot spend money twice. I will agree with the Republicans on one point. We were wrong for 40 years. I use `we' loosely, because I was not here. We should not have borrowed that money and used it to reduce the size of the deficit, and the public agrees. They sent us that message in 1994.

What I am afraid of is that the Republican majority has forgotten the very message that sent them here. I hope that the American public will send them the same message in 1998: Do not borrow from the Social Security trust fund and treat it as income. That is manipulative rhetoric, and it is wrong.

The reason is that money is already spoken for. We have to pay it back. We should not let the Republicans, any more that we would let the Democrats, spend money twice. It gets us into big deficits.