The Trust Committed To Me, by Mark Sanford: on Social Security


Off-budget accounting undermines trust in government

One house colleague talked about how we should move Social Security and its so-called Trust Funds off-budget and how John Kasich, the incoming head of the House Budget Committee, had said no. The reason? If we removed Social Security, and the mountain of money pouring onto it, from the budget, we wouldn’t have been able to formally balance the budget by the target year of 2002. We needed the excess tax revenue Social Security was generating to mask the true size of the yearly budget deficit.

This creative accounting was the type of behavior that consistently undermined people’s trust in government Even before we could get started on the hard work of cutting government down to a manageable size, the old bulls who publicly said they wanted to balance the budget and cut wasteful programs were already hard at work cooking the books. And they were doing it with Social Security, the one program almost everyone privately admitted was headed for trouble.

Source: The Trust Committed to Me, by Mark Sanford, p. 7-8 Nov 4, 2000

  • The above quotations are from The Trust Committed To Me, by Mark Sanford.
  • Click here for definitions & background information on Social Security.
  • Click here for other issues (main summary page).
  • Click here for more quotes by Mark Sanford on Social Security.
Candidates and political leaders on Social Security:

Retired Senate as of Jan. 2015:
GA:Chambliss(R)
IA:Harkin(D)
MI:Levin(D)
MT:Baucus(D)
NE:Johanns(R)
OK:Coburn(R)
SD:Johnson(D)
WV:Rockefeller(D)

Resigned from 113th House:
AL-1:Jo Bonner(R)
FL-19:Trey Radel(R)
LA-5:Rod Alexander(R)
MA-5:Ed Markey(D)
MO-9:Jo Ann Emerson(R)
NC-12:Melvin Watt(D)
SC-1:Tim Scott(R) 		Retired House to run for Senate or Governor:
AR-4:Tom Cotton(R)
GA-1:Jack Kingston(R)
GA-10:Paul Broun(R)
GA-11:Phil Gingrey(R)
HI-1:Colleen Hanabusa(D)
IA-1:Bruce Braley(D)
LA-6:Bill Cassidy(R)
ME-2:Mike Michaud(D)
MI-14:Gary Peters(D)
MT-0:Steve Daines(R)
OK-5:James Lankford(R)
PA-13:Allyson Schwartz(D)
TX-36:Steve Stockman(R)
WV-2:Shelley Capito(R) 		Retired House as of Jan. 2015:
AL-6:Spencer Bachus(R)
AR-2:Tim Griffin(R)
CA-11:George Miller(D)
CA-25:Howard McKeon(R)
CA-33:Henry Waxman(D)
CA-45:John Campbell(R)
IA-3:Tom Latham(R)
MN-6:Michele Bachmann(R)
NC-6:Howard Coble(R)
NC-7:Mike McIntyre(D)
NJ-3:Jon Runyan(R)
NY-4:Carolyn McCarthy(D)
NY-21:Bill Owens(D)
PA-6:Jim Gerlach(R)
UT-4:Jim Matheson(D)
VA-8:Jim Moran(D)
VA-10:Frank Wolf(R)
Please consider a donation to OnTheIssues.org!
Click for details -- or send donations to:
1770 Mass Ave. #630, Cambridge MA 02140
E-mail: submit@OnTheIssues.org
(We rely on your support!)

Page last updated: Feb 25, 2019