[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
URGING RESPONSIBLE STEWARDSHIP OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY TRUST 
                                  FUND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bachus] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BACHUS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, on February 8, I said that there 
was a cancer eating away at our Nation's Social Secrity trust funds. I 
warned that unless this Congress acted soon, the future financial 
security of not only our senior citizens but each and every one of us 
would be at risk. On February 8, I predict that the Social Security 
disability trust fund could become insolvent by the end of this year. 
At that time, some scoffed at my suggestions.
  In fact, my call for action was no exaggeration. My assumptions were 
confirmed by a recent report by the Social Security board of trustees.
  The 1994 Annual Report of the Social Security board of trustees 
states that this fund will have a $4 billion deficit by the end of 
1995. By the end of the century, the disability trust fund will have a 
negative balance of $78 billion. That deficit will almost double by the 
year 2003 to $144 billion, if Congress and the Clinton administration 
do not take steps to correct this impending financial nightmare.
  An editorial in Monday's Washington Post only confirms my fears. The 
Post has charged, as I have, that ``the federal disability programs are 
out of control.''
  The Social Security board of trustees is again recommending that 
contributions intended to support our senior citizens be shifted out of 
Social Security's old-age and survivors' trust fund and into the 
disability trust fund.
  Mr. Speaker, stealing from Social Security's old-age and survivors 
fund and from every working American and senior citizen to prop-up the 
disability trust fund is irresponsible and unwise. This so-called 
temporary fix is no fix at all.
  There is a more rational and reasonable solution. On February 8, I 
introduced House Joint Resolution 319. This legislation directs the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services to examine the underlying causes 
of the shortfall in the disability fund and report back to the Congress 
on possible solutions.
  Transferring money from the old-age and survivors trust fund to prop 
up the disability trust fund without fixing the underlying problems in 
the disability programs, as President Clinton has proposed in the 
budget, is not the answer.
  Sooner or later, attention must be focused on a responsible solution 
to this growing problem--the urgent need for top-to-bottom reform of 
the Federal disability programs. Nothing short of a complete overhaul 
of the process and the policy behind the determination of who is 
disabled and how and to what extent they should be compensated will do.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in promoting responsible stewardship 
of the Social Security disability trust fund. Did we not learn from the 
$110 billion savings and loan debacle? We must address the problem now 
or face up to a $144 billion problem 9 years from now. Join me in 
cosponsoring House Joint Resolution 319.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a copy of the article in the 
Washington Post of Monday, April 18, 1994, referred to earlier:

                         Sneaking Up on Policy

       The Federal disability programs are out of control. In the 
     mid-1980s the two main programs together had an enrollment of 
     4.9 million. By 1993 the number had risen to 7.3 million, an 
     increase of 50 percent in just eight years. Costs had 
     meanwhile doubled, to more than $50 billion. The disability 
     programs together--the insurance benefits paid to disabled 
     workers through Social Security and the welfare benefits paid 
     to the disabled poor through the Supplemental Security Income 
     or SSI program--now rank fourth in size on the federal 
     entitlement list, behind only the old-age part of Social 
     Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
       The benefits may well be all or mostly legitimate. That's 
     less the issue than the fact that the programs achieved their 
     present expanse through a process that was almost 
     unwittingly. You will look in vain for clear and explicit 
     discussions over the years, after which majorities of 
     Congress voted deliberately to achieve the present result. 
     Instead, the programs grew piecemeal and were largely 
     ratcheted up in size through the courts. Advocates dropped 
     fragments of language into the statutes that then became the 
     bases of lawsuits expanding eligibility far beyond the points 
     that most members likely ever dreamed they were voting for. 
     Thanks to a 1990 Supreme Court decision based on one such 
     insertion, many of the new recipients of SSI benefits on 
     grounds of disability are children. A new report by the 
     Congressional Research Service also observes that more than a 
     fourth of Social Security disability awards are now given for 
     mental as distinct from physical disorders; for the looser 
     SSI, the figure is more than half.
       No one disputes that many children of needy parents have 
     serious disabilities, or that psychological factors can be 
     disabling--and it may be necessary for the government to act 
     in both such cases. But to have legitimacy, a major policy 
     change needs to be explicitly made. You can't minimize such a 
     transformation while slipping it into law and then, as its 
     costs become apparent, just saying it will endure. In 1978 
     Congress passed and Jimmy Carter signed something called the 
     Middle-Income Student Assistance Act, which basically removed 
     most family income limitations from college student aid. The 
     nature of the legislation was not well understood at the 
     time; most of the income limits have since been restored. 
     Likewise, under the rubric of welfare reform, the 
     administration and advocacy groups are now discussing making 
     child care more or more or less an entitlement for all near-
     poor and poor single parents whether they are on welfare or 
     not. But it's enormously expensive and should not be turned 
     into law as a kind of footnote. Legislators have a 
     responsibility to publicly face what they are authorizing and 
     to face as well the fiscal questions that follow.
       As to disability, the administration and Congress both are 
     looking for ways to rationalize the policies into which the 
     government has stumbled and to cut the programs back. Sooner 
     or later they'll do it, but in the meantime people are left 
     again with the damaging impression that the giving and 
     getting of government benefits is mostly a game of grab. The 
     right way to make major policy of this sort is through the 
     front door, not the back.

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