[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 28 (Thursday, March 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H790-H795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEFINING DEVIANCY, UP AND DOWN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, let me say I think the gentleman from
California has a wonderful idea and I am certainly pleased to be a
cosponsor of his bill.
I wanted to talk today about something that occurred in this Chamber
yesterday, something that was ridiculed by people that I consider to be
radicals, dismissed by many in the media, called trivial by many
observers, but in my mind we did something very significant yesterday.
We have seen over the past 30 years that the radical revolution of
the left has torn this country apart at the seams. We live today in a
country, as the Speaker says, that has 12-year-old children on drugs,
15-year-olds shooting each other, and 18-year-olds graduating from high
school with diplomas that they cannot even read. America has lived in a
valueless society that our radical policies of the past 30 years have
created.
In 1994, there was a shift back to the center, and yesterday I
believe that Congress passed a simple resolution that helped move us
back to the right direction where our Founding Fathers wanted us to be.
[[Page H791]]
So what was this dangerous piece of legislation? What was this
supposedly unconstitutional resolution? What was this frightening
document that the radicals said would spell an end to the separation
between church and state and tear the Constitution apart at the seams?
It was a very simple resolution that said a court in Alabama ought to
be able to hang the Ten Commandments on the wall, the same way that the
Supreme Court of the United States hangs the Ten Commandments on the
wall in its building, just as we in this Congress every morning pledge
allegiance and hear a prayer as we look up to the words ``In God We
Trust,'' just as Americans for the first 200 years of this civilization
were not afraid to acknowledge that God and faith played a key role in
the founding of this country.
Now, these radicals will tell you that this resolution we passed
yesterday did violence to the Constitution and was something that the
Founding Fathers would never agree with. They would also tell you that
they were the ones that would have to step in to protect the
Constitution, and yet I think it is very instructive at this point to
look back at what the father of the Constitution said regarding the Ten
Commandments. The father of the Constitution was also the fourth
President of the United States, James Madison. And while drafting the
Constitution, Madison said,
We have staked the entire future of America's civilization
not upon the power of government, but upon the capacity of
each of us to govern ourselves, control ourselves, and
sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
So here we have the father of the Constitution telling us that the
Constitution and American civilization was based upon the Ten
Commandments of God. Here we have a situation where the Father of our
country, George Washington, in his farewell address spoke to America
and said, ``It is impossible to govern rightly without God and the Ten
Commandments.''
We had Founding Father after Founding Father writing the
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, who recognized that we
were a country, one country under God, a country who knew its Judeo-
Christian heritage and did not run away from it.
It is something they do not teach in schools, it is something the
radicals do not want anyone to know about, but that is how it has been
in this country until recently, until we had the radicals storm the
streets in the 1960's and undermine our efforts across the globe, who
in the 1970's stormed Washington and think tanks, and who in the 1980's
took control of Hollywood and took control of the people making the TV
shows that our children see, and who in the 1990's, unfortunately, took
control of some of the highest seats of power in the United States of
America.
{time} 1345
It is very frightening to me, and it is very frightening, because
what they have sought to do and I think what they have accomplished is
doing something called defining deviancy down and defining deviancy up.
And those are a couple of catch phrases that Senator Moynihan created
and also a columnist named Charles Krauthammer created. To do that,
what you try to do is you try to make the conventional seem radical and
you try to make the radical seem conventional.
So we find ourselves 30 years later in a civilization where the words
of Madonna, that life of Larry Flynt, and the acts of Dennis Rodman are
glorified and take the place of the words of Washington, Jefferson,
Lincoln, and fill this valueless void that used to be filled and made
complete by our Judeo-Christian heritage. It is a dangerous situation,
it is a dangerous situation for my 6-year-old boy and my 9-year-old
boy, and yet all they will tell us is that there is something called
the separation between church and state.
Mr. Speaker, this debate is not about religion. This debate is not
about morality. This debate is not about Christianity. This debate is
about America's proud heritage. I am more afraid, much, much more
afraid of intolerance of ideas and of political correctness than I am
of letting Americans know what their proud heritage has been and what
it will be once again.
Mr. Speaker, we can build a bridge to the 21st century. I have got no
problem with that. I just have a problem with radicals that would want
to disconnect us from our proud heritage in the past that made America
the greatest country in the history not only of Western civilization
but in the history of this world.
My friend from California is here who has been talking about this for
years. He has almost been like a voice crying in the wilderness while
many people here did not want to talk about it while the radicals had
control of power.
I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate the gentleman's comments. When we talk
about the Judeo-Christian heritage of our country, and let us remember,
by the way, there are many people who agree with the Judeo-Christian
tenets, for example, are in the Muslim community as well. This is not
an attempt to try to force any type of religious prayer or religious
concept on others. But what we do and what today we are faced with is
that those people who stand for certain values and certain traditions
find themselves under attack.
One of the greatest parts of the Judeo-Christian heritage is a
concept called individual responsibility, that you are responsible for
your actions and that you will face that responsibility before God. And
so really, individual freedom is part of that Judeo-Christian heritage
that we talk about. That is where it ties into our Founding Fathers,
who believed that freedom of religion was a right that they would fight
for. That has been so turned around and so disfigured today that what
we have got are people who are trying to express their own religious
beliefs are being told, in the name of separation of church and state,
in the name of the Constitution to shut up.
How many times do we have to hear the ACLU and others say, you cannot
put a manger scene in front of city hall, before we start saying to
ourselves, something is wrong here. Whose freedom are we talking about?
The freedom of someone who wants to just express a belief in God,
whether it is a manger scene or a Star of David during a time of
religious importance to one of the great faiths of our country. There
is nothing wrong with having them be able to express themselves, and we
Christians or Jews or Muslims express ourselves that way. But we have
the left wing who is committed to use the force of law to prevent
people in our society from expressing their religious beliefs using the
separation of church and state as a hammer to prevent us from
expressing ourselves.
In my part of the country out in Orange County, the Boy Scouts of
America are spending tens of thousands of dollars in order to defend
themselves against what? Defend themselves against some liberal left-
wing parent who is trying to force the Scouts to take God out of the
Scout oath because his children do not want to say ``God.'' Because his
children do not want to say ``God,'' it should not be in the Scout
oath. This is absolutely an attack on the freedom of those people in
the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. Yet where is the outcry in
this? Where are the people who supposedly believe in freedom of speech?
The greatest threat today against people who believe in God, whether
they be Christians, Jews, or Muslims, is the U.S. Government coming
under the domination of atheists who want to suppress people's
expression of their own religion.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. The gentleman has touched on something, we have seen
it on local school boards, he has touched on something that we have
seen up here for too long now. What that is, is people parading around
in a politically correct cloak that will tell us in the name of
tolerance that they have a right to be intolerant, that they have a
right again to preach this valueless void, where Jews, Christians,
Muslims cannot express their views.
Mr. Speaker, I do not fear my 9-year-old boy, who is in public
schools, hearing somebody who is of the Muslim faith speak. I do not
fear my 9-year-old boy hearing an orthodox Jew speak to him or to his
class or a Catholic or a Pentecostal or a Baptist. I do not fear that.
America, according to Jefferson, who the radicals are now calling
radical, according to Jefferson, America is the free marketplace of
ideas, where the strongest ideas survive. Yet what they want to do is
this sort of moral leveling, where there is this valueless
[[Page H792]]
void where nothing is right, nothing is wrong, nothing is black,
nothing is white, nothing is legal, nothing is illegal.
We are seeing that manifest in the papers every day when officials in
this administration continue to talk about moral revelancy, moral
equivalency: Hey, nothing is right, nothing is wrong; I know what the
law says, but it is not really important.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield further, we have more
people being told they cannot put a traditional manger scene in front
of city hall or at the school yard during Christmas time. At the same
time, these same people, by the way, are insisting that we are engaged
in censorship if we refuse to let the NEA, the National Endowment for
the Arts, give grants to people who blatantly attack religion,
blatantly attack other people's faith. It is okay to subsidize it, but
it is wrong for us to put up a manger scene to respect the birth of
Christ or to have a Star of David to reflect our worshiping on Passover
or some of the other religious holidays that we have.
This has come to the point where the Boy Scouts of America, for
example, as I said, not only, people are trying to force God out of the
Scout oath. Here is one of the most decent organizations in the history
of our country, who has done more to help young people through these
hard times in their life, when they are coming into adulthood than
Scouting, the young men and young women of our country teaching great
values. Now they are having to spend tens of thousands of dollars,
just, No. 1, to keep God in the Scout oath and, No. 2, to have
standards so that they will have standards so that scoutmasters have a
certain moral standard.
There have been a lot of attacks on the religious right, and I will
say that I do not attack other people's beliefs, but one thing I demand
is that my beliefs that I hold true should not be attacked as well and
we should have a right to express it. The religious right more often
than not is simply saying and representing a group of Americans that
have a set of beliefs and just want to believe that for their own
family. And they are saying the Federal Government should not force us
to accept another standard which we believe to be immoral.
And the Boy Scouts of America, it has to do, and I will be flat out
about it, the hiring of homosexuals as scoutmasters. That is their
right as a private organization to do that. And I believe that, if they
did not have that standard, a lot of parents would not permit their
children into the Scouts and to go out under adult supervision of
someone who is sexually attracted to someone of the same sex. But that
is the right of that organization.
In San Diego, in California, they said the Boy Scouts could not even
use school facilities. They could not use the school facilities which
their tax dollars are paying for unless they were willing to take the
ban off hiring homosexuals as scoutmasters. In other words, they have
to eliminate their moral standards. This is ridiculous. This is an
attack on their rights.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. What radicals do is, and what they have done by
defining deviancy down as up, is radicals attack conventional beliefs,
they attack the foundation of this Republic, the views by our Founding
Fathers, because that is the only way they can seem less radical. They
attack the Ten Commandments as being radical and unconstitutional even
though the father of our Constitution says that America's civilization
is based on the Ten Commandments. They attack the Boy Scouts, saying it
is a radical organization.
They attack the Christian right. I have never heard them attack the
Christian left. I will be really honest. It is so politically correct
to attack the Christian right that many people who agree with the
Christian right do not come close to them because they have been the
third rail of American politics for some time, touch them and you die.
If I stand up and support something that the Christian right is
doing, then I am immediately a member of a suspect class, much as in
the past those on the left were seen as members of the suspect class.
It is a modern version of McCarthyism.
Let me read one thing and then I will yield further to the gentleman.
I want to read something that Robert Bork wrote in a great book called
``Slouching Towards Gomorrah.'' I think this explains why radicals have
been able to get away with what radicals have gotten away with for the
past 30 years and why they have made the conventional seem radical.
Bork writes on page 7 of ``Slouching Towards Gomorrah'':
Modern liberalism is powerful because it has enlisted our
cultural elites; those who man the institutions that
manufacture, manipulate and disseminate ideas, attitudes and
symbols. Universities, churches, Hollywood, the national
press, print and electronic, foundation staffs, the public
interests, organizations, much of the congressional
Democratic party, and some of the congressional Republicans
as well and large sections of the judiciary, including all
too often a majority of the Supreme Court.
People do not realize this. That is why one cannot turn on the news
at night and get the straight news, because the same people, and they
do not want you to say this. They want to revise history. They tried to
revise the words of Jefferson and Madison and Lincoln. They want to
revise what they did in the 1960's. The same people who marched in the
streets in the 1960's and according to the North Vietnamese generals
after the war, won the war for North Vietnam. That is their words, not
mine. Those same people in the 1970's, in the 1980's and 1990's went
straight to these areas, these cultural institutions where they could
continue to shape and manufacture ideas and continue to make the
conventional seem radical.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Your basic point about those of us expressing
another view becoming beaten down, I will have to say, I just expressed
something a few moments ago about the hiring of homosexuals by the Boy
Scouts. Let me say that I personally never criticize people's personal
lives. I do not. I will answer to God for my personal life and I have
my own set of beliefs. I just will not criticize people for their
personal lives. But let me say, I demand the right for myself and for
others to have the right to make those value judgments and to make
those stands and to express them.
But I can tell you right now, I will be attacked by saying the Boy
Scouts have a right to set their own standards, I will be attacked as
if I am advocating an attack on somebody else. In reality, it is the
opposite. It is the people with more traditional values who are under
attack.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. And you would be called a bigot because you do not
sit back and say absolutely nothing. Again it is not an issue of
intolerance, it is not an issue of whether I am going to judge somebody
for the life they live. That is up to them. That is what America is
about. But at the same time private organizations have a right to make
private decisions.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. They have an obligation.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. They have an obligation. But again this is what has
happened to us over the past 30 years, why we have been cowed, why we
have been beaten down. Every time we try to speak up for values and
beliefs that we hold dear and that our Founding Fathers hold dear, we
are attacked by extremists in an extreme manner. We are called bigots,
we are called racists.
I was just in an education hearing where I simply said that I believe
that parents and teachers and school board members should have a bigger
say in their education than bureaucrats in Washington, DC.
{time} 1400
This person testifying, supporting the President, the President's
proposals, basically said that if we left it to the States, then we
would have handicapped children locked in closets, that we would have
private schools taking control who did not care about handicapped
children, who did not care about children with dirty clothes, who did
not care about all these other things.
Now I have got to tell you we have not stood up and said enough is
enough, and I can tell you as a Baptist who went to a Catholic
parochial school I am insulted, and I am not afraid to say it any more,
I am insulted by radicals attacking us, telling us that we do not care
simply because we want to give power to parents instead of give power
to bureaucrats, and it is
[[Page H793]]
time that we stopped being cowed by these radicals that have destroyed
this country over the past 30 years. It is time that we say enough is
enough.
Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. PAUL. Yes, I find your conversation very interesting, and it
reminds me of a incident that occurred not too many years ago.
I am a physician. I graduated from medical school in 1961, and at
that particular time they decided that saying the Hippocratic oath was
no longer necessary, and I did not recite the Hippocratic oath at my
graduation.
But when my son graduated there in 1988, they allowed us to come back
to say the Hippocratic oath. We were given that chance to come back
because they were saying it once again, and I was very interested in
this, so I went to his graduation, and at the ceremony they were
reciting the Hippocratic oath. And lo and behold, when I looked
carefully at it, it was not the same oath. They had changed the clause
on abortion. It did not say that you should not use an instrument to do
an abortion. They merely said you should follow the law, whatever the
law is.
So I thought that was a interesting little story to support your case
that truth seems to be easily revised in this day and age.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I thank the gentleman. And revisionism occurs all
the time, and we are told that our Founding Fathers were racists and
bigots and that they were radicals and that is--you know, that did not
happen before 1994. It is very interesting that Jefferson was the hero
of liberals until 1994, and then a group of us got elected quoting
Jefferson, saying the government that governs least governs best, and
suddenly he was not a useful hero. In fact, we had people actually
writing op-eds this past year saying that the Jefferson Memorial needed
to be taken down brick by brick by brick because he was a racist and
because he was a radical.
Mr. Speaker, that just shows how desperate revisionists are. They
would say the same thing of Abraham Lincoln if we quoted Lincoln too
much, and I want to quote Lincoln because I am sure that if a
President, sitting President today, said these words, he or she would
be called a radical. Abraham Lincoln said this in 1863 in a
proclamation.
He said we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other Nation
has ever grown, but we have forgotten God. Intoxicated with unbroken
success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of
redeeming and preserving grace and too proud to pray to the God that
made us.
My gosh. If we said that, we would be called radicals, we would be
called extremists, and now what they will tell us is that this is about
religion, that you are trying to make everybody a Christian or a Jew or
a Muslim. It is not the case. This fight is not about establishing a
religion because that is unconstitutional, and I am against it 100
percent. What this is about is reconnecting our children and our
grandchildren with their heritage.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North
Carolina.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, you know I agree in what you are saying and
being able to speak what you think, and I appreciate your quoting
Lincoln because he is also one of my heroes. And it kind of ties in
with a couple of things that I wanted to mention this afternoon, you
know, and this is really kind of in view of our bipartisan retreat that
is coming up. I kind of wanted to remind people, making an appeal that,
you know the words of the great American philosopher, Pogo: We have met
the enemy, and he is us.
I think there are few of us who have been entrusted with the honor of
serving in this great institution that are unaware of the low esteem in
which we are corporately regarded today. And you know sometimes in the
interest of reelection, flawed egos or some purposes of political or
personal gain, we abuse our privilege and we dishonor our predecessors
and slight our fellow Americans and weaken our Nation, and you know it
has been true that there have been scoundrels in the past that have
thrown shadows over this great noble body. But you know we have gotten
to the point where there is a great deal of distrust and cynicism out
there in what we do and what goes on here, in the way we treat one
another.
And so I guess I am just saying that, you know, we claim to trust
God, and in His name I would like to ask us to really reason together
for the good of all and, you know, let us respect one another and
tolerate one another's differences and not get upset when somebody says
something that they deeply believe, but try and work together and stop
destroying one another and lift one another up and endeavor to achieve
the height of leadership the American people not only deserve but that
they expect of us. And let us seek to be a credit to our Nation and
proper example to our world and a joy to our God, and I believe that
Lincoln who have agreed with that. Do you not?
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I certainly do, and I certainly appreciate your
words because I guess this is what has disappointed me over the past 2
years more than anything else.
There are Members here who I disagree with on practically every
issue, Members like Ron Dellums of California. He is on National
Defense. I do not think I could find anybody on the issue of national
defense that I disagree with more. I do not think I could find anybody
on several other issues that I disagree with more. Quite frankly, I
think his views are not the best views for America's future. The same
with Barney Frank from Massachusetts. But I have got to tell you I can
talk to Barney Frank of Massachusetts, and it helps me as a
conservative, talking to a liberal who I disagree with to see whether
my views are correct or to see whether I am taking an easier path than
I should be taking.
The same thing with Ron Dellums. I had a great talk with Ron Dellums
when we first got here. He came over, he walked over from that side of
the aisle, over here where a lot of us were sitting, young Republicans
who had just gotten elected, and we talked for a while. And he said to
me, he goes: ``You know,''--he said, ``I don't understand why all you
young guys are Republicans, why you're all conservatives. It doesn't
make sense to me. Explain it to me.''
And I said to him, I said, ``Well, you know, Congressman, when you
look on this side of the aisle, your views were shaped in the 1950's
and 1960's. You saw a Republican majority that supported public
discrimination, that supported a lot of the things that happened in the
Southeast, where I am from, that were morally repugnant, and the party
of Vietnam and Watergate. When I look on your side of the aisle, I
think of where I was in 1979, 1978, 1979, 1980, when I first started
becoming politically involved, or in my mind watching TV, and as I was
about to start college, and I see the party of the Iran hostage crisis.
I see the party of Jimmy Carter. I see the party of 21-percent interest
rates. I see the party of a failed liberal policy that has bankrupted
this country.''
So we come from two different worlds, but we can still respect each
other, and Ron Dellums, always a gentleman, said to me, said something
like, ``That is really deep, man,'' or whatever Ron said, and we
respect each other. I think most everybody in this Chamber respects Ron
Dellums.
When Ron was over on the Committee on National Security as chairman,
hardly any Republicans and most Democrats agreed with him, but when I
first got here and I started saying, well, how is this Member and how
is that Member, when we talked about Ron Dellums, they said, ``Hey,
don't say anything bad about Ron. He may be out there in left field
ideologically, but at the same time the guy is fair.''
And so we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can get on the
floor, and we can debate in the strongest terms possible, and we need
to do that without becoming personal in our attacks.
Mrs. MYRICK. I think that is true, and that is one thing that has
been missing, and it is a good point that you make because this place
is such a busy place that you do not take time to build those
friendships and you do not take time to walk across that aisle and get
to know somebody else, and I think that has been a big mistake and I
hope that all of us can start to do more of that sharing and really try
and reach out, and have our disagreements because you are going to have
to disagree philosophically. We will have a lot of
[[Page H794]]
differences; that is the way it is. But it does not mean that you
cannot establish those friendships, and I commend you for doing that.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina, and I
agree with her. We do need to establish these friendships, and at the
same time we do not need to create this false, bland bipartisanship
where nobody is afraid to speak their mind because the American people
might be upset that two independent minds in the free marketplace of
ideas disagree with each other. Do not be afraid when you turn on C-
SPAN and somebody is pointing across the aisle to somebody else and
talking about how they disagree. That is how we move forward as a
country, two competing ideas. Unfortunately many of us on the
conservative side have been quiet for too long.
Early on in the Bork book he quotes a poet, William Butler Yates, in
a great poem called ``The Second Coming,'' and the last line talks
about the beast slouching toward Bethlehem. The book is obviously
called ``Slouching Toward Gomorrah,'' but this is what Bork highlights,
the part where it says the best lack all conviction while the worst are
full of passionate intensity. For too long the best have lacked all
conviction, the best have remained silent as this country has gone down
a radical left path that our Founding Fathers would have been
absolutely horrified in, a path that dooms our children.
It is not just cultural. It is economic, too. You know, we have got a
$5.6 trillion debt, and we still do not have enough people in this town
with the willpower to spend only as much money as we take in.
So what does that mean? It means that our children are going to be
burdened with an incredible debt as they grow older.
My 6- and 9-year-old boys 20 years from now are going to be paying 89
percent of every dollar they make to the Federal Government, and that
was not a Republican that came up with that. That came from Senator Bob
Kerrey's independent commission on entitlement reform, you see, because
these baby boomers who are slouching toward retirement will overwhelm
the system too soon.
You know, back in the 1950's there were 15 people working for every 1
person on Social Security. Today there are 3 people working for every 1
person on Social Security. And 20 years from now when baby boomers are
retiring, there is going to be 1 person working for every 1 person on
Social Security. So that means our children will not have 14 others in
a pool to help pay the beneficiary their benefits that were promised to
them. We will only have 1 person working for every 1 person on Social
Security, and I have got to tell you the prospects are bleak if we do
not have the moral conviction and the moral courage to step forward and
save our children's future, and ensure them the same American dream
that our parents and grandparents tried to pass on to us.
One member of our historic freshman class of the 104th Congress is
the gentleman from South Carolina, who has been looking into how we can
make Social Security solvent for our senior citizens without
bankrupting our children, and there are going to be a lot of different
ideas. We may not agree on what is the best approach, but I can tell
you that in the free marketplace of ideas the only way that we can move
forward with an agenda that can save our children and save our
grandparents from economic calamity is to debate in the free
marketplace of ideas and hopefully do so without people demagoging and
trying to scare our eldest citizens.
{time} 1415
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr.
Sanford] for a few minutes, and if he could, to discuss one of his
proposals.
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
In our limited time I will not really go into a proposal we are
working on, but what I would like to do for just a few minutes is talk
about the problem that is before us, because as the gentleman
suggested, we have a very considerable problem if we do nothing. There
is the old saying of hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil, the
three monkeys. That seems to be the way Congress is at this point
approaching Social Security. It is the most important program we have
in this country and it is absolutely vital that we save it.
To save it, we have to begin, as the gentleman suggested, by talking
about it. What is interesting about this problem is not what
Republicans have said, not what Democrats have said, not what Ross
Perot has said, but what the trustees for the trust fund itself have
said; that if we do nothing, Social Security will go bankrupt in 2029,
and it will begin to run deficits around 2012 when those baby boomers
begin to retire, such that either we have to look at raising payroll
taxes by about 16 percent, or cutting benefits by about 14 percent, or
growing the deficit by roughly the same number.
What I hear from folks back home in the district is, Mark, I am
struggling. The idea of raising my payroll taxes by another 16 percent
makes no sense to me. When I talk to seniors, they say, Mark, I am
struggling. The idea of cutting my benefits by 14 percent is not an
option.
What is really interesting are the demographics behind what is
driving this change. They are, one, that people are living longer. When
Social Security was created in 1935, the average life expectancy was 62
years of age. Today it is 76. Every year that I grow older I hope it
keeps moving in that direction, but it creates real strains on a pay-
as-you-go system, which is what our system is right now.
The other demographic problem that is headed our way, and again it
is, I guess, a mixed blessing, is that we have gone from having big
families on the farm to having relatively few families today. As my
colleague, the gentleman from Florida, suggested, again, when Social
Security was created there were 42 workers for every retiree. By 1960
there were, or 1950 rather, there were around 16 workers for every
retiree. Today there are 3.2 workers for every retiree. We are well on
our way to having two and then one worker for every retiree.
Again, that is a demographic phenomenon we are not going to change.
For me to suggest to my wife--we have three little boys--Jennie, what
do you think, another six or seven children and I think we can maybe
help to solve this Social Security problem, is not going to fly. So we
are looking at demographic trends we cannot change.
That leaves us with a number of, I think, crazy options. We can wait
and do nothing and let Social Security go bankrupt, which I do not
think is an option. We can wait and do nothing and raise payroll taxes
by 16 percent. I do not think that is an option. We can wait and do
nothing and cut benefits by 14 percent. I do not think that is an
option. We can grow the deficit by roughly 14 to 16 percent. I do not
think that is an option. We can lower life expectancy or change
fertility rates. Those are not options.
That leaves us with one option. That one option is letting people
invest their own money in their own savings accounts and letting that
grow and compound over time.
Einstein was once asked, what is the most powerful force in the
universe? His reply was, compound interest. It is amazing what you can
end up with at the end of a working lifetime if you put a little bit
away into your own account that politicians cannot get their hands on,
again, over a working lifetime.
I just wanted to touch for a few minutes on the problem. I will be
back on many other visits to talk about many of the benefits that would
come with change, or our specific ideas on the subject. But I did not
want to interrupt my colleague, the gentleman from Florida, for more
than just a couple of minutes.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Let me ask the gentleman quickly, I know the
gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] has been talking about taking
Social Security off budget. What we mean by that is right now I think
Social Security is running about a $62 billion, $63 billion surplus.
When we get together and talk about balancing the budget, one of the
ways we do it is say, we have $63 billion over in that trust fund. Why
do we not do a little accounting trick and shift it over, and that will
make our job $63 billion easier when they know they cannot get their
hands on that anyway.
Unfortunately, there is a conspiracy of silence on both sides of the
aisle with Congress and the President, because it is in the President's
best interest to try to balance the budget. He
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says he is going to balance the budget, and he has a balanced budget
plan. It is $62 billion out of whack. If we add the $62 billion surplus
in Social Security that he is counting on to cook the books, it is $120
billion in red. The same thing with the Republicans.
If we have the courage, and I pray that we still do, if we have the
courage to come forward with a plan to balance the budget, and yet if
we shift $62 billion over from a Social Security trust fund in an
accounting trick that we cannot use, then we are $62 billion short.
So I support the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann]. Does the
gentleman from South Carolina support the gentleman from Wisconsin's
proposal?
Mr. SANFORD. I do. As we both know, it will not save Social Security
in the long run, because we have this giant demographic shift coming
our way as the baby boomers begin to retire in 2012, and there are 730
million. They are about double the size of the generation before and
double the size of the generation after.
In other words, it will not save us from that avalanche of graying in
America, if you want to call it that, that is headed our way, but it
would certainly be a step in the right direction. And most importantly,
as the gentleman suggests, if Washington is to be trusted, we have to
have, in essence, honest accounting.
For us to say a trust fund, but it is not really a trust fund, is not
honest accounting. For us to use Social Security moneys to in essence
mask the size of the real operating budget here in Washington again is
not an honest accounting. What I hear from folks back home in my
district say is that they would like to see honest accounting, and they
would like trust fund money to stay in its trust fund.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. When you talk about honest accounting, and talking
about trust, I have to tell the gentleman, his job is going to be made
more difficult, the job of the gentleman from Wisconsin is going to be
made more difficult, and this institution's job is going to be made
more difficult in this area and the entitlement area in general,
because of the shameless display we saw over the past 2 years of those
who would attack us because were trying to keep Medicare solvent.
The gentleman talked about the trustees. They told us that Medicare
was going bankrupt. So we had a group of people step forward with a
bold proposal, and the Speaker of the House, who has been fodder for
every political campaign over the past 2 years, the Speaker actually
had the courage to step forward and say, I know Medicare is the third
rail of American politics, I know we are not supposed to touch
entitlements; but it is dying and we had better fix it now. If we do
not fix it now, we are going to have to pay for it later, and it is
going to be seniors and middle-class taxpayers who take the biggest hit
if we do not fix it now.
So we stepped forward and we had the courage to do something 2 years
ago. Unfortunately, we paid for it in political terms, because there
were others that used that against us.
I have to say that if I could do anything this session, it would be
to once again instill in the hearts and minds of all these people the
courage to step forward and do what has to be done to make Medicare
solvent, to make Social Security solvent; because all these other
issues about cutting a program 2 percentage points or 4 percentage
points, or increasing school lunch programs 4 percentage points instead
of 6 percentage points, they are irrelevant.
In the long run, they are irrelevant economically, because it is
Medicare, it is Social Security, it is Medicaid that is expanding at
such a rapid clip that it is going to overwhelm all of us, it is going
to overwhelm this Congress, and it is going to create an economic
meltdown if we do not do something about it.
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much. I
appreciate him letting me borrow a little of his time.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I thank the gentleman, because it does really play
into what we were talking about before, and that is talking about
creating a civilization that is more connected, more closely connected
to the views of our Founding Fathers, to the views of Washington and
Jefferson and Lincoln, than to the cultural views of what happened in
the 1960s or what is happening now: The life of Larry Flynt or the
words of Madonna or the actions of Dennis Rodman.
We have to step forward and not be afraid of our past but embrace our
past, embrace the ideals of our Founding Fathers who said, ``We have
staked the entire future of the American civilization not on the power
of government, but on the capacity of Americans to live and govern and
control themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God''; or the
ideals of Jefferson, who said that the government that governs least
governs best.
Those are not radical ideas. Those are ideas for the 21st century.
Those are ideas that are going to overwhelm the liberals anyway, that
are going to overwhelm the radicals anyway. We are moving from an
industrial age to an information society, where information
disseminates, and just as the agrarian age had a decentralizing impact
and the industrial age had a centralizing impact, the Information Age
once again is going to empower the individual.
We in Washington should get out of the way and let individuals live
as they choose to live, let individuals study as they choose to study,
let them worship as they choose to worship, let them spend their hard-
earned tax dollars as they choose to spend the money that they make,
and we need to get out of their way and let them prosper.
If we do that, we will once again be the great civilization that we
once were. We will once again be what Abraham Lincoln spoke about when
he said America was the last great hope for a dying world. We still
are. We have just gotten off track in the past 30 years.
And hopefully what we did yesterday, what we tried to do over the
past 2 years, will begin to bear some fruit. We will create America, we
will build a bridge to the 21st century also that will not be based on
what happened over the past 30 years, but instead based on those great
and lofty ideas that we find in the writings and words of our Founding
Fathers.
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