[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 14, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2036-H2039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REPORT FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take a few minutes tonight. I 
know via C-SPAN that this is going to be very hard for the people at 
home to read but I think it shows a tremendous problem that we have in 
our foreign policy and how that policy is being carried out.
  I want to just read it verbatim. What this is is listings taken 
directly from the U.S. Department of State's 1998 Human Rights 
Practices Report.
  The Department of State is required by law to assess human rights 
violations ongoing in countries that we have dealings with.
  There are two countries here that are listed, and we have significant 
involvement, ongoing today, with these two countries. If I may, under 
country A, this government's human rights record worsened significantly 
and there were

[[Page H2037]]

problems in many areas, including extrajudicial killings, murders, 
disappearances, torture, brutal beatings and arbitrary arrests and 
detentions. Country B, the government's human rights record 
deteriorated sharply beginning in the final months of this last year 
with a crackdown against organized political dissent. Abuses included 
instances of extrajudicial killings, torture, mistreatment of 
prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrests and detention, lengthy 
incommunicado detention and denial of due process.
  Second area, country A, the government infringed on the citizen's 
right to privacy. The same thing, country B, the government infringed 
on the citizen's right to privacy.
  Number three, under country A, the government severely restricted the 
freedom of speech and of the press. The same thing, country B, the 
government continued restrictions on the freedom of speech and of the 
press.
  The fourth area of concern, discrimination and violence against women 
remained serious problems. Discrimination against religious and ethnic 
minorities worsened during the year. Country B, discrimination against 
women, minorities and the disabled, violence against women, including 
coercive family planning practices which sometimes included forced 
abortion and forced sterilization, prostitution, trafficking in women 
and children and abuse of children are all significant problems.
  Fifth area, the government infringed on the freedom of worship by 
minority religions and restricted freedom of movement. Country B, 
serious human rights abuses persisted in minority areas where 
restrictions on religion and other fundamental freedoms intensified.

                              {time}  1915

  The sixth area, Country A, the police committed numerous serious and 
systematic human rights abuses. Country B, security police and 
personnel were responsible for numerous human rights abuses.
  What kind of countries are these? The first is a constitutional 
republic, the second is an authoritarian state. Country A happens to be 
Yugoslavia. Country B happens to be China.
  We are bombing Yugoslavia as I speak. We are courting China to the 
World Trade Organization. We give them MFN, most-favored-nation status 
privileges, in trading with us.
  Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, I call on you to have some 
consistency in our foreign policy. The human rights abuses are 
atrocious for both these countries. Our policy has to be consistent.


                     The Social Security Trust Fund

  Now I would like to spend some time tonight talking about the 
problems that really face us. Today we did pass a budget. It is the 
first honest budget. I have been here, I am in my fifth year. I am a 
term-limited congressman. I have one year to go.
  This is the first budget that the Congress of the United States has 
considered that is honest in comparison with the numbers for the people 
of this country. It is honest about what our problems are, it is honest 
about what the real numbers are in terms of money, and it speaks 
honestly about what our situations are financially.
  The social security trust fund is a definite problem for us. I think 
it is important that we understand how it works, because most of the 
people in my district still think there is real money in a trust fund. 
That is what it was intended to be, but in fact we have not used it 
that way, and it has not been done for 40 or 50 years. In fact, the 
money actually has been taken to use on other programs.
  What happens now is when we earn a salary, the money that is paid in 
by our employer or us directly, if we are self-employed, comes to the 
Federal Government. Excess money coming into social security that is 
above that which is paid out in social security benefits is used to pay 
for more spending, or pay off publicly-held debt.
  We have heard today a lot of people talk about paying off debt. If we 
pay off publicly-held debt by borrowing money from the social security, 
we have not changed our debt at all, we have just changed who we owe it 
to. We also change who is going to be supplying the repayment of that 
debt. So we put IOUs in the trust fund that bear interest.
  We are not paying any of that back. As a matter of fact, we are 
actually creating a larger quantity, and doing so at a greater rate 
than we ever have in our country's history.
  In the year 2014, which is the latest, just this last week, the 
Social Security Administration came out with revised numbers that in 
the year 2014 there will not be a surplus of payments coming into the 
social security system. In fact, what that means is the money that will 
be paid out to benefits, to social security recipients, will exceed the 
amount of money that the people working are paying into the system.
  What is going to happen? We are going to have to get the money 
somewhere, so we are going to either raise taxes or borrow the money by 
creating additional obligations and reshifting the debt back out of the 
social security to publicly-held debt.
  What we are doing, we have the little peanut in the shell game that 
has been going on for the last 50 years in this country. The budget 
that was passed today specifically addresses the problems associated 
with this. All social security trust funds will be moved off-budget and 
not used for anything except retiring debt: no increased spending, no 
tax cuts, nothing except reserving them for future use for social 
security.
  So you can get an idea of what is actually happening in the social 
security trust fund balance, the year 1999 is this year. We are going 
to have about an $80 billion, maybe $90 billion surplus in social 
security payments in excess of what we are paying out.
  But as we can see, by the year 2014 what happens is that we start 
going in the red. We have to borrow money to pay social security, or we 
have to cut spending somewhere else, or we have to issue new 
instruments of debt, which is the same thing as borrowing money, or we 
have to raise taxes. We are going to talk about that in a minute.
  It is interesting to note a mere 30 years from now we will have $700 
billion worth of underpayment in the social security system, $700 
billion that we are either going to have to raise the taxes on our 
children or grandchildren just to meet the obligations for the social 
security system.
  By the way, these numbers come from the social security trustees' 
report. None of these are opinionated numbers made up by a Congressman. 
They either come from the Office of Management and Budget, the 
Congressional Budget Office, or social security.
  So what are our options? There is one fact that is true: In the year 
2014, social security will pay out more than it takes in. That has not 
changed. It has moved one year in the last 2 years.
  The first thing we can do is save 100 percent of the social security 
surplus and transition to a system with individually-controlled 
investments. We can repay the money from the trust fund by raising 
income taxes on ourselves now, or our children or our grandchildren, or 
we can delay the date by raising the retirement age or reducing 
benefits. None of those are of value to anybody that is paying taxes 
today. They are not of value to our seniors. We have to fulfill our 
commitment to our seniors.
  So we only have three options: raise taxes, decrease benefits, or 
make social security a system that will work. The most interesting 
thing about social security, had we put the money that was put into our 
account for social security in a passbook savings account, we would 
have earned on compounded interest four times what is going to be 
available to our account under the government's auspices. The average 
annual interest earnings on social security trust funds is 1.2 percent.
  Another way of looking at what is going to happen with social 
security taxes is to look at what the tax rate is now on the employee 
and employer share. Right now it is 12.5, 12.6 percent that is paid, 
half of that out of your salary, half out of your employer's salary, or 
if you are self-employed, you pay it all.
  We can see the green line shows that that is the rate. If we continue 
at that same rate, the red line shows what we are going to have to 
have. So we can see that by the year 2029 we are going to have to go 
all the way up to 18 percent. We are going to have to have a 50 percent 
increase in social security taxes, just to meet the demands that are 
going to be on the system.

[[Page H2038]]

  It is not any wonder that when people are polled in this country, 
that they have more confidence in the fact that there are UFOs out 
there than that the social security system will be viable for them. 
Here is why. If your current age is 5, you have an average life 
expectancy of 82.5 years. If you earned the average wage in 1998, you 
would have to live an extra 5.1 years over your expected life 
expectancy just to get back the money you put in, with interest paid on 
that. If you earned the maximum, which is $70,000, or $68,400 in 1998, 
it is higher than that now, you would have to live an extra 14.9 years.
  Let us say you are 34. Your life expectancy if you are 34 years of 
age today is 83.8 years, on average. If you earned the average wage 
during 1998 and you did that for the rest of your working period until 
you were eligible for social security, you would have to live to be 
100.5 years, almost 101 years old to ever get back even what you put 
into the social security system.
  If you earn the maximum, $68,000, you have to live to be 172 years 
old to get your money back out of the social security system. Why? 
Because the money is not invested properly, it is not achieving daily 
compound interest, and the money has been spent for things other than 
what it was intended to.

  Why is social security important? If we do not fix social security, 
if we do not quit stealing social security money, if we do not make 
social security a viable retirement system, our grandchildren will have 
a much poorer standard of living than what we have today. We are 
stealing opportunities from our children and our grandchildren by not 
being responsible over the past 50 years.
  That is why the budget that passed today was so important. For the 
first time it recognizes that money for social security is intended to 
be for social security, and that that money is not intended for tax 
cuts, that money is not intended for increased spending on anything 
except social security.
  Each citizen's share of the debt, in 1997, $19,898; 1998, $20,123; 
1999, at the end of this year, September 30th of this year, every 
person, man, woman, and child in this country, will be responsible for 
almost $21,000 of debt.
  More importantly, substitute the politicians' surplus that they have 
been talking about the last couple of years, and we do not have a real 
surplus. What we have is an excess payment of social security monies 
over what is paid out. There is not a true surplus projected until the 
year 2001.
  What is happening daily? Every day the debt that our children and 
grandchildren must repay goes up by $275 million. In 1998, the national 
debt rose by $120 billion. Yet, the politicians said we had a surplus 
of $69 billion. Something does not add up. We will never have a surplus 
until the debt stops rising. That is how you measure a surplus. If the 
debt is rising, we cannot possibly have a surplus.
  If any business, any homeowner, any group of individuals managed 
their books the way the Federal Government manages theirs, first of all 
they would be going to jail. Number two, if they rob from the pension 
plan the way the Congress through the years has robbed from the social 
security plan, they would be in jail already.
  The most important aspect of putting social security back and 
building its integrity is the fact that we will start a new process 
that recognizes that if the Congress makes an obligation to the 
American people, they have to keep that obligation. It is called truth 
in budgeting. There is no surplus. There is a politician's surplus. We 
will talk about that a little bit.
  Here is what has been publicly said by both the politicians in 
Congress and the administration about surplus: in 1998, a $69 billion 
surplus. But how did the national debt go from $5,340 billion to $5,440 
billion if we had a surplus? It is because we really did not have a 
surplus.
  When we say we have a surplus, then it is easier to spend more of our 
tax dollars, it is easier to cut taxes because, oh, we have extra 
money. We have no extra money. As a matter of fact, we owe $1.6 
trillion to the social security system now. The money is not there. It 
has already been spent on something else.
  When we hear the word ``surplus,'' if we ever encounter that, if we 
read it in the newspapers, it has to be an on-budget surplus. We use 
two sets of numbers, one for political purposes, for people to get 
reelected, and the other that is a real true number that we end up 
making hard decisions on.
  The politicians' surplus is a lie. There is not a surplus. If we 
apply these numbers carefully, we can look at what President Clinton 
has proposed and the actual spending and what is proposed in this 
budget, and we can see big differences in the numbers.
  If we totally exclude social security money from all spending and we 
keep the budget caps that were agreed to in 1997, that the President 
and the Congress agreed to, then a couple of things are going to 
happen.

                              {time}  1930

  In 1998, if we restrain spending, the real deficit was about $30 
billion instead of $69 billion surplus. If we can restrain spending and 
live within the caps, based on the Congressional Budget Office's 
projections of what will happen in terms of revenue and costs, what we 
will see is that we will get a real surplus, a citizens' surplus. More 
money, we will actually have more money in than we have obligations to 
meet, not touching any Social Security money.
  Why is that important? Because in the year 2014 when we have to start 
paying out this large amount of money to Social Security payments, we 
are going to have to get that money somewhere.
  We can do two things. We can borrow the money, which just delays the 
price of that to a future time, or we can change the system. We can cut 
the benefits. We can delay the age. We can say one cannot have Social 
Security until one is 75 and one has to continue to work.
  The problem with that is we have made a commitment to the American 
people in terms of the Social Security retirement system. The other 
problem with it is that the Social Security system today is not a 
livable retirement wage.
  So if we want to meet the obligation to the senior citizens of this 
country, and I am soon to be one, I now have an AARP card I am proud to 
say, that we have to make the hard choices, we have to be honest about 
what our budgeting problems are, and we have to keep our hands off 
Social Security.
  When I talk to people in my district, I hear lots of worries about 
creating a system other than the system that we have now that would 
take a small percentage, say a third of one's Social Security payments, 
and allow one to put that in a restricted, highly safe investment 
entity that would earn interest at three or four times the rate that 
the government is going to earn interest.
  It is not hard to figure out at compound interest, if the Federal 
Government is earning 1.2 percent on one's money, and the average 
private investment vehicle today, discounting the rise in the market 
the last 6 or 7 years, but pre-1992 was 7 percent, what one is talking 
about is a fivefold increase in the earnings power of that money.
  Einstein said the most important scientific fact that he ever looked 
at powerwise was the power of compound interest, that if one gets paid 
interest daily on money that one saves, that the building power of that 
each day that base amount rose and one earns more interest on a higher 
amount each day, eventually what one will achieve is a marked reduction 
in the cost for any service that one would offer.
  This ability to restrain spending, to stay within the caps is the 
most important thing that Congress can do. The budget that we passed 
today does exactly that. It preserves 100 percent of the Social 
Security funds for Social Security.
  Number two, it restrains spending by staying within the budget caps 
agreed to between the President and the Congress in 1997. We cannot do 
anything any more important than that for our children and our 
grandchildren.
  Part of being a Member of Congress is helping us fulfill our 
obligations, not just to our seniors, but fulfilling the obligations 
that we have to our children and the future generations that come after 
us.
  I want to use an example. This is not meant to be a partisan example, 
but it tells very specifically what happened in 1998 with the supposed 
``surplus,'' but really spending the Social Security surplus.

[[Page H2039]]

  We had $127 billion more come into the budget in 1999 on Social 
Security than we actually paid out. Correction. That is, 1999 was 
projected to be $127 billion. We have agreed to spend $1 billion, or we 
think we have agreed because it is in conference now, in terms of the 
emergency spending bill, in terms of all of the tragedies that happened 
in South America. That brings us to $126 billion.
  We had a bill that spent an additional $15 billion at the end of last 
year outside of the caps that we had agreed to. So that brought it down 
to $111 billion. We had another billion dollars that was spent in 
agreement with the President in emergency appropriations.
  So last year we stole $17 billion of the Social Security surplus 
straight off the top.
  What is going to happen this year, the expected surplus is $138 
billion in Social Security. The surplus for the general accounts is not 
near that. It is at actually a deficit.
  If we do not accomplish what we said we would with this budget today, 
what will happen is we will be using Social Security money again to pay 
for things that we should be paying for with things other than Social 
Security dollars.
  We will be undermining the Social Security system. We will not be 
honest about what we are doing here. We will have two sets of numbers 
again, one for the American people when we are campaigning and being 
politicians and trying to look good, and another that is the real world 
that someday we are going to have a day of reckoning when it comes to 
our kids.
  The President put forth the budget that said, over the next 15 years, 
we spend only 38 percent of the Social Security surplus when we should 
not spend any of it. But even under his budget for the year 2000, he 
actually spends 42 percent of it on increased programs within the 
Federal Government.
  Let us not spend any of the Social Security money. Another thing has 
struck me since I have been in Congress. I am a physician, 
obstetrician, family practice doctor. I delivered 97 babies last year 
while I was in Congress. So I go home every weekend. On Mondays, I 
still practice medicine, lots of times on Fridays, and every fourth 
weekend I am on call. So I get to talk to people about real problems, 
see the real issues that they are involved in.
  It strikes me so peculiar that we talk so easy about these large 
numbers. The application is, when I have a senior citizen in my office, 
and they are not taking their medicine, and the reason they are not 
taking their medicine is because they cannot afford to take their 
medicine, that they are choosing between eating and taking the medicine 
that will extend their lives, that we have failed as a Nation under, 
quote, Social Security and Medicare to provide the things that we 
promised that we would provide.
  The other thing that strikes me is that we heard the gentleman from 
North Carolina earlier say that the reason that we had this huge 
deficit was tax cuts in the future. We have two ways of affecting 
government funds. We can either spend more or less, that is one way, or 
we can raise taxes or lower taxes. It is one or the other. One is not 
better than the other when it comes to balancing our books. If in fact 
we need to cut spending, we can.
  I cannot find one person in my district who thinks that the Federal 
Government is efficient; that it could not be. As a matter of fact, if 
one knows anything about the history of World War II, when this country 
had to improve efficiency, when we had a crisis that faced us, what we 
did is markedly reduce the cost of the bureaucracy of the Federal 
Government so that more dollars went into our ability to sustain the 
freedom that we all cherish.

  We have that big of a crisis facing us today. It is not flashy. It is 
not great big. It is not in front of us all the time. But the fact is, 
is our children and our grandchildren, unless we have fiscal 
discipline, will have a markedly lower standard of living. We do not 
have any option to that except doing the right thing now.
  I am going to close here in a minute. One of the things that I have 
learned in my short stint as a politician is that there is a lot of 
ways to look at things. There is a way to look at things if one wants 
to get reelected. There is a way to look at things if one wants to play 
ball up here with the politicians. There is a way to look at things if 
one wants to be able to sleep at night.
  Martin Luther King in his last speech at the National Cathedral, his 
last major speech, said this: Cowardice asked the question, is it 
expedient? Vanity asked the question, is it popular? But conscience 
asked the question, is it right?
  It is not right to steal Social Security money and use it in other 
things. It is not right to be dishonest with the American public about 
the budget numbers that we deal with every day.
  It is not right to be untruthful about our situation in Yugoslavia or 
our trading relationships with China. They are equivalently the same in 
terms of the way they treat humans. They are both atrocious.
  We have to live with ourselves. We have to demand the integrity and 
the statesmanship that is necessary for our freedom to operate.
  As we spend more of one's money and we do not fulfill our 
obligations, we all lose freedom. I want freedom for my grandchildren. 
I want freedom for my children. I have three daughters, two sons-in-
law, two grandchildren. My greatest dream is that they will have the 
opportunity to be free and succeed in a free society. That requires 
integrity in the Congress and requires integrity at every level in this 
government.
  We can become much more efficient. We can do the right things. We do 
not have to always be popular. We do not have to look for the expedient 
way. That is the way of the coward.

                          ____________________