It is

surprising to me that the issue of returning taxpayer

overpayments has become a partisan issue in Washington,

D.C.

This tax bill was designed

to strengthen and save Social Security and Medicare,

while at the same time providing tax cuts to the

Americans who pay a historically high percentage of their

paychecks to Uncle Sam. The tax cuts, in turn, were

designed to encourage savings, help create jobs, and to

assist workers and their families. It does this by

addressing important tax and debt issues being lost to

the public in the heat of partisan wrangling.

The House Ways and Means

Committee, on which I serve, wrote this tax bill guided

Reserve. Mr. Greenspan knows that more than two out of

three dollars of the "surplus" are taxes paid

for Social Security and Medicare, so he urged Congress to

put all of those payments into the two trust funds.

That is what we have done.

Some, but not all, of the remaining "surplus"

is earmarked, again following Mr. Greenspan's advice, for

gradually implemented tax cuts, and lower capital gains

taxes. We also restrained spending per his advice.

Additionally, the tax cuts were designed with a failsafe

to freeze the rate reduction if government revenues

decline and threaten the balanced budget.

This package makes sense

because it deals with one of the fundamental issues

affecting this country - the national debt. The

national debt lurks in the background of every discussion

on Social Security and Medicare solvency. Do we deal with

it by spending, or by saving? It is obvious what

President Clinton and the Democratic Party believes

should be done: spend. They talk savings, but remember

the laundry list of spending plans laid out by the

president in the last State of the Union address?

Look at the Democrats'

recent plans to add more entitlements to Medicare before

the program is fully stabilized, and you'll know where

things are headed. Alan Greenspan knows this, and told

the House Ways and Means Committee: "My first

priority, if I were given such a priority, is to let the

surpluses run... my second priority is, if you find as a

consequence of those surpluses, they tend to be spent,

then I would be more in the camp of cutting taxes,

because the least desirable is using those surpluses for

expanding outlays."

He re-iterated it in

Wednesday's testimony before senators. The spin that he

is slamming the Republican tax cuts is not accurate. Why

did Mr. Greenspan take that position? It is because the

national debt will put on weight if we do not restrain

spending.

A lot of people don't

realize that our national debt has two parts. The first

part is government debt, which is mainly held in trust

funds supported by special payroll or excise taxes.

Social Security and Medicare are the best-known trust

funds, but there are others, such as the Highway Trust

Fund, which were expected to be off-limits.

The other part of the

national debt is public debt held by citizens,

non-citizens, corporations and foreign governments. If we

actually restrain spending under a balanced budget, the

money still entering Social Security and Medicare will,

strangely enough, increase the government part of the

national debt. That is because these funds are required

Bills. If we hold fast to the balanced budget, the public

side of the equation will decline by the same rate that

the government, or trust fund side, increases.

If the rate of increase and

decrease does not balance, it means we are still spending

some of the money that should go into the trust funds.

That's not right. The dilemma we face is that

Washington's bureaucrats perceive there is

"excess" money available, they want to spend

it, and there is not enough bipartisan discipline in this

town to stop them. That will increase the national debt

and endanger Social Security and Medicare even as they

cope with the demographic strains of an aging population.

In less than 30 years,

there will be only two workers supporting each retiree.

What should we do? Some may argue we should keep the

money for national debt reduction, but keep it out of the

hands of the politicians; that is a vain hope. The two

realistic choices are to either spend the money to create

new entitlements, or return the money to the people who

earned it through tax relief. Since spending the money

guarantees a growing national debt, a less secure future

for America and increased financial burdens on taxpayers,

I opt to trust Americans to invest, save, or spend their

money as they see fit.

I hope that President

Clinton sees it that way and reconsiders his threat to

veto.

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