These growing deficits and debt threaten our nation's long-term economic security. As deficits climb, we are borrowing more and more money from Japan, China, and even South Korea. That makes us weaker,

Democratic amendments led to a package with a smaller tax cut, far more resources for paying down the debt and strengthening education, and for strengthening national defense.

As the news this morning of increased joblessness and earlier reports of exploding deficit and debt reveal, the president's economic policy is a disaster. Obviously, the secretary of the treasury and Mr. Lindsey are being sacrificed to protect the president. Sadly, the removal of these economic officials will do nothing if they are simply replaced with yes-men committed to the president's relentlessly partisan agenda of pushing tax cuts at the expense of all else.

If you are not able to pay down the debt, that means that the federal government is in competition with private-sector borrowers for money, driving up the costs of interest rates and that's a hidden tax on every American family -- higher mortgage payments, higher car payments, higher college loan payments,

The Congressional Budget Office tells us by 2052, Social Security could meet only 78 percent of its obligations. Medicare is in even worse shape. The shortfall in Medicare is eight times the deficit in Social Security. But the president has no plan to deal with that. The truth is, we need to confront all these challenges sooner rather than later.

By using Social Security trust fund dollars to pay for tax cuts and other government spending, the administration significantly understates the true fiscal imbalance of the country.