Leadership Quote by Jim Costa

Costa is doing a classic Washington magic trick: pull one ledger line out of the hat and suddenly the rabbit looks like a crisis. The sentence is built to sound like sober bookkeeping, but its real intent is rhetorical triage. By invoking “as a matter of fact,” he frames his claim as plain arithmetic, not partisan argument. The move is strategic: if you can recast the deficit as a simple consequence of “not taking into account” the Social Security surplus, you can make opponents look either ignorant of math or willfully deceptive.

The subtext is a fight over what counts as “real” money. Social Security surpluses have long been used to soften the appearance of the federal deficit on paper, even though those funds are legally earmarked and politically sacrosanct. Costa’s line signals to budget hawks and anxious moderates: if you strip out the trust-fund cushion, the government’s day-to-day finances are far worse than advertised. That “over $700 billion” is doing emotional work, too; round numbers with a “b” attached function as moral adjectives in fiscal debates.

The “ladies and gentlemen” isn’t a throwaway. It’s a miniature stage cue, turning a procedural budget point into a public-facing warning. And the name-check of Congressman Ross spreads accountability: this isn’t just Costa’s critique; it’s presented as a shared, on-the-record reckoning. In context, it’s less about accounting purity than about defining the problem before the policy fight begins.