BOB EDWARDS, HOST: On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties are starting to talk about something not seen in Washington for decades: a budget surplus. New projections by the Congressional Budget Office estimate that by 2002 the federal budget once again will be in the black. Although that's still five years away, members of Congress already are proposing ways to spend the money. Later this month in the House, Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, a Republican from Ohio, will hold hearings to discuss some of the proposals. Kasich wants to use the budget surplus to help offset shortfalls in the Social Security trust fund when the baby-boom generation begins retiring in a little more than ten years. He says other congressmen have different ideas. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN KASICH (R-OH), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE: Some people want to spend it on highways. Some will want to spend it on research. Some will want to spend it on, well, a myriad of federal programs. Some will want more tax cuts. And I think one of things we have to be careful about is that we don't willy-nilly turn a temporary surplus into a spending spree and miss a golden opportunity to potentially use the surplus as a way to create permanent surpluses. Temporary surpluses mean at some point you go back down in the hole again. And as I think you know, and of course every young person in the country knows, Social Security is in deep, deep trouble. And when you take the retirement programs of Social Security and Medicare, if we don't come up with permanent fixes to these programs they threaten really to not just sink our kids, but our economy as well. EDWARDS: What's the projection for how long the surpluses'll last? KASICH: I think the surpluses are projected to last about five years. And the Congressional Budget Office is projecting those surpluses could be somewhere in the order of $300 billion. But, you know, I really have to make it clear that these are just projections. And I wouldn't want to hang on the basis of their projections being accurate, one way or the other. EDWARDS: Well, we're told a bailout of the Social Security trust fund might be necessary, in which case there goes your surplus, right? KASICH: Well, again, when we talk about a bailout, I don't want to think about a bailout, I want to think about how we can get Social Security on a secure footing. And something that's gonna guarantee young people an opportunity to be able to build their accounts so that when in fact they do retire something's going to be there. But, I guess, in one sense you can call it a bailout because what you need to do is you need to figure out how you hold as many people harmless as you possibly can so that you can politically be able to enact a program that can have the kind of support among the American people that'll allow you to really get this program on a firm footing. And I can't really tell you at this point what the transition costs are gonna be because we don't know exactly what the program is gonna look like. And in addition to that, we really don't know what level of sacrifice people are willing to be a part of. EDWARDS: Well, plus you could have an economic downturn. KASICH: That's possible as well. That's why we shouldn't be so quick to all of a sudden think there -- we're gonna have all this money. But, the fact is, is that the budget agreement itself was written with conservative economics. It wasn't based on the kind of growth that we're having in the economy right now. So, I feel pretty good about the fact that, even if we have a downturn, that is anticipated in this budget agreement. EDWARDS: It's hard to mention a surplus without thinking of the fivetrillion-dollar national debt. Is there a feeling that this surplus is just such a small amount compared to the debt that why bother? KASICH: Well, I think that, you know, when we're talking about Society Security we are talking about the public debt. And that's why I think it is so important. And let me, let me just emphasize this. If in fact you end up with a serendipity, you end up with a few extra dollars that you can use to invest in fundamental changes that would bring about major positive change for the country: one, you would help to solidify the retirement programs of the federal government. Two, that you would increase the savings rate of Americans. Three, that that would lead to more investment and would lead to more economic growth and would allow more families to realize hopefully higher productivity gains so they would not have to work as many hours. When you have to spend more time working, it means you have less time doing a lot of other positive things, you know, like being with your kids or being with your wife. And I think that if in fact we can begin to fix these retirement programs and give people, for example, individual savings accounts, I think it has a very significant macro, a positive macro effect on the way that our economy'll function. EDWARDS: Congressman John Kasich is a Republican from Ohio and the chairman of the House Budget Committee. Copyright © 1997 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.