[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 46 (Thursday, April 23, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H2303]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PUTTING SECURITY BACK INTO SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cooksey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on what my 
colleague from Mississippi was talking about, and that is the surplus.
  As we all may know, theologians have a thing, a word, a concept, if 
you will, called original sin, and the idea is from original sin all 
other sins flow. And when Washington these days begins talking about 
the idea of surplus, it seems to me that that is the original sin in 
Washington, because I just have real questions about the idea of us 
really running a surplus.
  I have got a question from the standpoint of accounting. I mean, in 
the President's budget that was sent up to the Congress, it listed in 
it a $9.5 billion surplus, and yet the national debt would go up by 
$176 billion. That is the equivalent of saying I am going to pay off 
$95 on my credit card balance, but my credit card balance is going to 
go up by $1,700.
  Mathematically that is impossible, with the exception of anyplace but 
Washington, D.C. Because in Washington, D.C., if you were to break out 
the budget, what you would see is $103.5 billion borrowed from Social 
Security, and as you add up the other trust fund borrowings, it comes 
to this $176 billion number.
  That number actually may be a little less than that because the 
surplus is supposed to be greater, but the point is that is not the way 
you do accounting back home in South Carolina, or Nevada, or Illinois, 
or anywhere else. That is not conventional accounting.
  Too, I think the surplus is somewhat fictitious simply from the 
standpoint of economy. The $225 billion that plugs the gap from where 
the Congress was and where the White House was built on the economy 
continuing to roll ahead, and I have serious reservations on it being 
able to continue to roll ahead.
  The third way, I guess, I have questions on the sustainability of the 
surplus would be simply on the basis of what we send to Washington 
every year. We are at a post-World War II high in terms of the amount 
of money that people send in taxes to Washington, D.C.
  This last year we hit 20.1 percent of GDP sent by hard-working 
Americans to Washington. Now, that was only met or exceeded basically 
at the height of World War II. In 1944, we hit 20.9 percent, and in 
1945 we hit 20.4 percent of GDP. Other than that, it has been below 20 
percent consistently, which means it only takes people modifying their 
behavior just a little in terms of a spouse working a little bit less 
or in terms of a worker spending a little bit more time with the family 
to all of a sudden have us drop below the 20 percent figure.
  If we did, the surpluses would go out the window.
  What this means to me as we begin to talk about the issue of Social 
Security is how do we have security with Social Security? Because what 
is interesting to me about the Social Security debate, is the President 
in this very Chamber said at the State of the Union that we ought to 
reserve every dollar of surplus for Social Security, and yet, given the 
way the trains have been running in this town recently, it seems to me 
if $50 or 60 billion comes to Washington, there is a good likelihood 
that that money will be spent. And if it is spent, it is not saved for 
Social Security.
  So I think that one of the things we really ought to begin looking at 
is the idea of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) of Social Security 
Plus. Quite simply, that would be taking the surplus money, rebating it 
back to everybody that pays Social Security taxes, and then letting 
them put that money in their own Social Security Plus account.

  The advantage for me of that idea is that by having it in your own 
account, and we are not talking about a lot of money, about $500, based 
on the size of the surplus in your account each year, and over the next 
6 years, that would be $3,000. But by having that money in your 
account, Washington cannot reach in and borrow that money.
  I think we really need to begin looking at that kind of security when 
we talk about the word ``Social Security'' if we are serious about, A, 
having every dollar of surplus go toward Social Security, and, B, on 
the whole concept of protecting Social Security.

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