“We need to deal with the entire budget, and we can’t do that unless the president himself says, ‘All right, I’m ready to bite the bullet, and I need some of you to go with me,’ and some of us are,” Alexander told reporters. “In fact, there’s a lot of us [that] are. A Congress of 535 people can’t speak with a single voice. The president can.”…

Among the entitlement programs up for cuts, Alexander said that Social Security was a “good place to start.”

“The era of Social Security surpluses is over,” Alexander said. “It’s very significant that this year Social Security has more money going out than coming in, and it’s very significant that in the next ten years Social Security will add a half trillion dollars to the deficit. Social Security would be a good place to start when dealing with these mandatory entitlement programs that are 57 percent of our budget.”