[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 62 (Thursday, May 18, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H3406-H3410]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walden of Oregon). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
McInnis) is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Point of Order
Mr. McINNIS. Point of order, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman, I think,
yielded me the balance of his time, which I think would give me an
additional 7 minutes. So I would request 37 minutes for the special
order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's guidelines, the
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) is not allowed to yield to the
gentleman, so the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
McInnis) for 30 minutes.
Mr. McINNIS. I thank the Speaker for the clarification.
Good evening, colleagues. I have been listening to the discussions. I
think we had a healthy discussion, where the gentleman from Iowa and
the gentlewoman from Connecticut were having a discussion. But previous
to that I was not quite as inspired as some might have been in regards
to her attack on the policies of the Governor of the State of Texas,
the Republican candidate for the Presidency, in regards to Social
Security.
Now, my purpose here this evening with my colleagues is not to talk
to them necessarily about partisan politics. That is not the purpose of
this podium. My purpose this evening is to talk about an issue that is
important and, by the way, not just important for women, it is very
important for women but it is very important for young people,
regardless of their sex, regardless of their ethnic background.
I tell my colleagues, we are not going to accomplish a solution for
Social Security by using fear tactics. Standing up and implying that
the women of this country, apart from any other segment of this
country, are endangered by Social Security ignores problems that go
across the sexes. These are fear tactics that are being launched
against senior citizens.
The reality of it is that every one of us in these chambers, every
one of us in these chambers knows that today every senior citizen, or
every beneficiary of Social Security benefits who is picking up the
check today will have the check next month, will have the check next
year, and will have the check as long as they are entitled to that
benefit. There is not, under anybody's, under anybody's study of Social
Security, there is not one beneficiary today who is receiving Social
Security funds, whose funds are endangered during the period of time
that they are to receive those funds.
[[Page H3407]]
It is nothing but pure and simple fear tactics to come out here and
somehow try to defend the status quo of a system that is not running
well and by doing that implying that people who are on the system today
are somehow going to be cut off. Imagine being a senior citizen and
hearing from a person in these great halls of Congress the implication
that either because they are a woman or because they are a senior
citizen that somehow their benefits are somehow going to be canceled
because a Republican, the Governor of the State of Texas, has come up
with something that changes the status quo.
The recommendation to change the status quo comes because of one
reason: Everybody in these chambers, everybody in our country admits
that Social Security needs to be improved. How interesting that during
the conversation of the gentlewoman from Connecticut she speaks
consistently of privatization. Maybe she should speak, maybe we should
all speak of personalization. Maybe we ought to look at this Social
Security System and, number one, admit that it is not working right and
quit being stuck on the status quo.
And by the way, this argument that, well, we are reducing the
national debt. How nice, after 40 years of Democrat leadership, 40
years of Democratic leadership which drove that debt to record highs,
which gave us that annual deficit. All of a sudden they have turned a
new leaf: Oh, let us reduce the national debt.
Let me tell my colleagues that in my opinion what we need to do is to
not look at the fear factor of Social Security. Forget the fear factor
of Social Security. Play fair on this. Look at the business factor of
Social Security. Let us get down with our pencils and get down there
with our pads of paper and figure out how we can improve the system.
I want to give my colleagues a suggestion, a suggestion that
everybody in this Chamber, every Federal employee gets to enjoy, and
then I want my colleagues to ask after I bring this system out, I want
my colleagues to ask why only Federal employees? Why only Congressmen
and Congresswomen? Why do they get this benefit and the rest of America
does not? Why are we a special class, as Federal employees? We get to
choose personalization. The gentleman from Connecticut who spoke up
here previously gets to choose personalization. All of us have that
option as Federal employees. As Congressmen we have that option to
personalize our account. Why can we not look at Social Security and
compare it to the system we have?
By the way, the system we have works very well. It is not broken. My
guess would be that every one of my colleagues on this floor who is
eligible for what we call Thrift Savings is in it. We are in the
program. And my bet is that every one of our employees are in that
program. Now, it is an option to go into that program. It is also my
bet that most Federal employees are in that program. Why are they in
that program? Because it works. They had a choice. It works and they
get some choice in the program. They get to personalize it.
That is what George W. Bush is talking about. Frankly, I compliment
him. We need somebody to stand up. Social Security in an election year
is one hot potato to deal with. It is tough. And here we had somebody
who had the courage to stand up and put out a plan that I think is
pretty bold, a plan that I think has a lot of inspiration and
initiative to it.
So let me tell my colleagues a little about the kind of plan that we
have here on the floor, our Federal Thrift Savings Plan. It is really
broken down into two parts. As a Federal employee, and let me speak
more specifically, as a United States Congressman, we get every month a
certain amount of money taken out of our pay that is put in for
retirement. We have no choice where that money is invested. We have no
choice how that money is invested. We cannot put our hands on that
money. That is the safety net. But the second option we have is what is
called Thrift Savings, and that is the kind of direction that is being
proposed to look at for Social Security.
Now, what does the Thrift Savings do? A Federal employee, or a
Congressman, let us take myself for an example, I, Scott McInnis, have
the option every month of taking a certain percentage of my salary and
putting it into the Thrift Savings program. Now, once it goes into the
program, my personalization really begins. At that point I get to make
a choice. No one else chooses for me. My employees do not choose for
me. The bureaucracy does not choose for me. I get to have a
personalized account.
And I have three basic options. I can take a high-risk speculative
stock investment, and in the last several years that has made an
enormous return, sometimes 24 to 48 percent. I do not have the exact
figure, but it is a tremendous return. I can go into a little bit lower
risk with the second option, which are bonds; or I can go into a
guaranteed fund, which has a low interest.
Remember, interest is based on risk. The higher the risk, the higher
the rate. The lower the risk, the lower the rate. So I can go into the
most conservative of the three options, and it is guaranteed, but it
does not return a lot of interest.
Now, when we take a look at what we have, and what has been suggested
here, I am frankly surprised that the Vice President, under his
policies, although 6 months ago he was in favor of something like this,
in the last week and a half, frankly because of the politics, that his
policy is stick with the status quo.
My good friend, the doctor here, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Ganske), and I compliment him, as being a doctor, I admire him for that
background.
Mr. GANSKE. And if the gentleman, when he gets a chance, would yield
for just a minute.
Mr. McINNIS. I will in just a moment, but let me go over a few
statistics that the gentleman brought up.
The gentleman before me talked about what are some of the
difficulties that we face with Social Security today. What are causing
some of the problems? It is pretty simple. It is demographics. In 1935,
when our Social Security System was put into place, we had 42 workers
for every retired person over 65. Today, as the gentleman highlighted
earlier, we have three workers for every retired person.
Now, as a compliment to the health care system of this country, when
Social Security was first put into place, a man could expect to live to
be 61 years old, a woman could expect to be 65. But because of health
care and taking better care of ourselves and so on and so forth, that
has gone up tremendously. So now people are living longer. The result
of this has been that throughout this period of time we have had people
who have refused to make those kind of adjustments. We had elected
officials who continued to defend the status quo and shove it on to the
next administration.
Well, I think it is time we take a stand and say we are not going to
stand for the status quo. This Social Security System owes something to
the women, absolutely, but we owe it to the women and we owe it to
every citizen in the United States to stand up now while the system
still has a positive cash flow and make commitments to move off the
status quo and improve our system. And the beauty of it is we do not
have to invent something brand new. This is a trail that has been
traveled. The snow has been plowed. We have this system, the Thrift
Savings system currently used by every Federal employee, or at least
given as an option for every Federal employee, and that system works.
In just one minute I will yield to the gentleman from Iowa, but let
me ask my colleagues, and I wish I had the time to go around
individually to every Member and ask them, since they get the Thrift
Savings option, what is so wrong with us at least having good
discussion about the people who are on Social Security or the people
who will be on Social Security, our young people or now the generation
behind me who is in the working place, what is wrong with asking that
generation if perhaps they would not like to personalize their account?
Tough answer.
I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. GANSKE. I appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I agree with
him totally that Governor Bush, to his credit, has had the courage to
talk about the future retirement of the baby boomers. This is, I think,
going to be a significant debate, and it should be.
In the past, any politician that would touch Social Security, it has
always
[[Page H3408]]
been called the third rail of politics, Governor Bush deserves an awful
lot of credit for the courage to talk about what are the options.
As we know from the Social Security Advisory Commission, the options
are, with all the baby boomers coming down the road, we either, for
those baby boomers, and we are not talking about current beneficiaries.
The gentleman made that point clearly, but I want to emphasize it. We
are not talking about current beneficiaries, we are talking about when
the baby boomers retire.
But for the baby boomers, with our huge numbers coming down the road,
the Social Security Advisory Commission has said that our options are
one of three: We are either going to have to reduce benefits by 25
percent for the baby boomers, not for current beneficiaries; we are
going to have to increase payroll taxes for those workers at that time,
these are our children that we are talking about; or we somehow or
other work to help every American in retirement be wealthier, to have
some type of increased return on investment.
{time} 2145
Now, that Social Security advisory commission was made up of people
representing labor unions, accountants, businesses, leaders from all
across the spectrum. They had three separate proposals for how you
would increase the return, and they vary in some details. But all of
them agreed, all three of the solutions agreed that the first two
solutions were not so great, and that was to either reduce benefits or
to increase taxes. And so I commend the gentleman for giving an
analogy, because our thrift, the Congressional Thrift Savings Plan is
equivalent to a 401(k) in the private community. And it is something
that we can elect to do. And if you are wise and you are looking at
your future pension requirements, you will take some of your current
salary and put it into that 401(k), just like people in businesses,
corporations, employees do.
But the analogy is very apt in terms of the choices that we have,
because that is one of the ways in which you could set up these
personal accounts in Social Security, and, that is, that, number one,
the government does not own those accounts, individuals do, and that is
important because you do not want the government to own half or three-
fourths of the stock market. Then the government can control
investment. I do not think that the government necessarily makes wise
decisions in investments.
So that is important. But there are mechanisms whereby through
certification of funds that can help keep the administrative costs low.
That has been something that people have criticized these accounts
about. There are choices that can be offered to individuals. Let us say
that you are younger, maybe you want to put that account into a growth
fund for a while but then as you grow older you want to be more
conservative so you switch it into a bond fund. Those are things that
Americans have learned to do. And I think it is correct that over
extended periods of time, you gain about twice or three times the
return through the market. We are just talking about, though, a small
percent and we are still talking about maintaining that safety net that
is very important.
Mr. McINNIS. The gentleman made a very clear point at the very end,
and, that is, on the thrift savings, there is an amount of money that
goes into our retirement every month we cannot touch. That money is
guaranteed. So even if on our personalized account we mess up, we still
have a safety net. I would ask every one of my colleagues in here, for
example, if the gentleman or I won a million dollars in the lottery and
we decided consciously that we wanted to take that $1 million and
invest it for our future retirement, how many of us would take that $1
million and turn it over to Social Security and say, ``Hey, why don't
you take the million dollars I just won and why don't you invest it
because I've got confidence that when I get 65 you're going to have
that million dollars and you will have taken good care in the
investment of it.'' There is not a person in this country that is going
to do it.
That is why when I listened to the previous speaker, let me say with
all due respect to my colleague, that you cannot maintain the status
quo. The Vice President has been very clear in his position. He wants
the status quo. Now, look, things have changed. We have got a new
economy out there. Take a look at the State of Florida last week. The
State of Florida took 650,000 State employees and said, hey, we are
going to let you go into your own, essentially what is a 401(k)
program. We are letting you come out. You can come out to a Corporate
Life 401(k) system. They get up to eight mutual funds to invest in.
Ohio and Kansas are right behind them.
The States realize this. The employees realize this. The women, the
children, the workers, they realize this. It is time to take a bold
move. When we speak of bold move, as the gentleman stated, we are not
talking about taking all of your Social Security money and putting it
in, bulk, into this. We are only allowing a transfer of 2 percent. But
that is considered bold when you are dealing with the status quo.
Let me mention a couple of other things because my good friend
brought them up. The program that the Governor of Texas, Mr. Bush, has
proposed had several principles. You hit on a few of them but that is
what that Social Security panel said was necessary. Number one,
modernization must not change existing benefits for retirees or near
retirees. The current retirees are not going to be impacted by this.
Their future is secure. And so are the expected retirees.
Mr. GANSKE. If the gentleman will yield, the retirees, for instance,
people who are 50 or 55 years or older, because we all recognize that
you cannot change the system for them. They would not have sufficient
time to build up additional reserves.
Mr. McINNIS. Reclaiming my time, the window of opportunity is too
narrow. That is acknowledged.
It is kind of common sense, the next thing, that the Social Security
surplus must be locked away for Social Security only. As you know, when
these Democrats, frankly, the leadership, had control of this budget
for 40 years, they used the Social Security money for other purposes.
It is the Republican bills that changed the status quo and said, wait a
minute, let us put Social Security money for the purpose of Social
Security. Social Security payroll taxes must not be increased. That is
another condition. The government must not invest Social Security funds
in the stock market, the very point the gentleman made 3 or 4 minutes
ago.
Modernization must preserve the disability and survivor components.
Modernization must include individually controlled personalized
voluntary, and ``voluntary'' is the key word, personal retirement
accounts which will augment, supplement the Social Security safety net.
I wish my colleague were here. I would say what is wrong with any one
of those elements. But let me say, if we adopt any one of those single
elements, we move off the status quo. You have got to be willing to
save Social Security, and to improve that system you have got to put
your stubbornness aside, Democrats, and be prepared to accept some of
these principles. And what is wrong with any one of them? There is not
one of those principles I mentioned that they would disagree with.
Let me say that I am not attempting up here to throw out partisan
warfare but I am saying, there is a clear difference, and as my
colleague who is a Democrat who spoke earlier, she also said there is a
clear difference between the two, and I think it is important for us to
distinguish between these two plans. One supports the status quo and
the second says we have got to make some type of improvement. The
improvement is based on those conditions I mentioned.
Again, just recapping, how many Members in here are not in thrift
savings? We all enjoy thrift savings. It is a voluntary program, it is
a personalized program. Likewise, how many of us in these chambers
would be willing to give Social Security a million dollars of our own
money to invest and plan for our retirement?
Mr. GANSKE. I think it is important to note that 6 months or so ago,
President Clinton and Vice President Gore talked about a plan to
utilize a portion of that payroll tax to go into personal accounts.
There were some differences in terms of the mechanics that they
[[Page H3409]]
were talking about, but I think it is clear as we look at the
demographics coming down the road that the status quo, doing nothing,
just is not going to work.
Now, when we look at, let us say taking 2 percent out of that 12.4
percent and moving it into a personal account, that means that there
are going to be some decreased dollars going into the Social Security
trust fund for that transition. I have a hard time understanding why
the Democrats who constantly talk about trying to direct tax cuts to
those who need it most do not seize on this. Look, the people that we,
Republicans and Democrats, both would agree need that tax cut the most,
the working Americans where their payroll tax is the biggest chunk of
tax they ever pay, why not give them, as Senator Bob Kerrey has said, a
payroll tax cut.
Mr. McINNIS. A Democrat, by the way.
Mr. GANSKE. A Democrat. And then use part of that surplus that we all
want to keep coming in, use part of that projected surplus to make up
the difference. That is a tax cut. That is a tax cut for the people who
need it the most. That is also helping every American who is working
and paying payroll taxes become richer. As Senator Bob Kerrey says, my
goal is to help every American in this country become wealthier. And
the way to do that is to set up these personal accounts while at the
same time preserving that safety net for those who are currently in the
program and for those who are coming into the program in, say, the next
10 or 15 years. And I think that you can do it. If we look at the
surplus that is coming along, if we look at the projections that have
been done already through CBO on plans that are like this. I just do
not buy this, quote, this risky language that we hear all the time.
As the gentleman said earlier, those are scare tactics. We need to
have a civil, calm discussion and try to achieve goals that are common
to both sides. But I think simply saying that the status quo is the
only way is not recognizing what the experts from the Social Security
advisory commission are telling us. They are warning us this.
Mr. McINNIS. One thing we should discuss with our colleagues before
they join on with the Vice President and talk about how reckless and
how fearful it is, remember, it is a little hypocritical for any
Federal employee to talk about the Bush proposal or the committee's
proposal as reckless when in fact we enjoy the benefits of the thrift
savings program which does exactly what we are posing in a smaller
fashion Social Security head towards.
In other words, I am not sure I have heard any complaint from any of
our colleagues, and I certainly have not heard any of our colleagues
calling our own thrift savings which is exactly what the gentleman is
talking about but as the gentleman knows we have it in place, I have
not heard any of them say this is a reckless, terrible deal. In fact,
my colleagues keep asking, why can I not contribute more? We would all
like to put a little more into this. This is a good idea. That is the
direction that I think we are headed.
I read the Wall Street Journal, they had an editorial yesterday, and
it is called Grabbing the Third Rail. The reason I reference grabbing
the third rail is it talks about the hot potato. It talks about the
fact it is time somebody who wants to be the leader of this country,
the President of this country, step forward and take a leadership role
and say, ``Look, we have got a storm out there, we can't sit at home in
the harbor. Somebody's got to take their ship out there and get to the
other side.''
Now, what is interesting in this particular editorial is they talked
about the fact that there has been some criticism, no details, not
enough details. They give four or five websites that you can go to on
your computer and these websites even have a calculator built in on
them, so that you can figure out what would happen to you as an
individual person. I will not go through all of them although I intend
to next week because I plan on giving another speech in regard to
Social Security because as the gentleman and I previously discussed, it
is important. But let me give one of them: socialsecurity.org/
index.html. That provides a lot of the detailed information that we are
talking about this evening.
I can tell the gentleman that when I mention the Vice President's
policy, that policy parallels the policy of the Democratic leadership.
Fortunately, not all the Democrats are agreeing with the Democratic
leadership. We have a number of Democrats, including as my colleague
mentioned Senator Kerrey who are saying, ``Wait a minute, you can't
stick with the status quo.'' Come on, let us get off these fear
tactics. Let us talk about business tactics. We have to change the
business model, just the same as businesses throughout our country are
changing the business model to deal with the Internet. We have got to
do it. This system is 65 years old. Although it is in a cash flow right
now, positive cash flow, as we both know, on an actuarial basis, this
deal is in trouble.
{time} 2200
But we got time to save it. The beauty of what we are doing right
now, our conversation today is we are not worried about a fund that is
going bankrupt tomorrow. For a change, finally, for a change, you have
got elected political government officials in this country talking in
advance of the crisis about what to do to avert the crisis.
A lot of times the government responds after the crisis occurs. Here
at least we have had the foresight for you to look at your children,
myself to look at my children, and say hey, we better do some planning
for these people.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walden of Oregon). Under the guidance
given to the Chair by the majority leader, the Chair now recognizes the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) for an additional 7 minutes,
which is the remainder of the hour reserved for the leadership.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Ganske).
Mr. GANSKE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
As I mentioned earlier this evening, for the last several years, as I
have done my town hall meetings around my district, I have actually
taken a computer program, run a laserpoint off it, the program I
borrowed from Senator Bob Kerrey, who is a Democrat, who talks about
the impending age wave and the Social Security Advisory Commission's
recommendations. We have had discussions across the 4th Congressional
District in Iowa about this.
For 2 years at least I have been arguing that we need a presidential
candidate of courage who would bring this up, who would be willing to
take a risk, to have a full and public debate on where we go with
probably the biggest issue that is facing our country, as well as all
of the other developed countries, and that is how do we deal with the
pension requirements of the baby-boomers in the next 20 to 30 years?
So we finally get a candidate like this. Governor Bush should be
given a huge accolade for being willing to bring this to the forefront
of the presidential debate. There is no question about it, they knew
fully down in Austin, Texas, that they were taking a risk by bringing
this important issue up, because this has been an issue that
politicians have been afraid of.
Well, we finally have a presidential candidate who has been willing
to take that risk, because this is the biggest issue facing our country
in the next 25 to 30 years, and, as the gentleman from Colorado pointed
out, you need time, time, to effect changes, to bring up the wealth of
the average American, to make sure that the system is solvent. You
cannot just take care of it when it is all of a sudden bankrupt, or
else you are going to have huge shifts and significant pain, both on
the part of the beneficiaries and on the part of the payees at that
time.
Now is the time. This is the election to make a determination and
have a debate on this issue, that we can then take into the year 2001
and say we have had this debate, and, if Governor Bush would become
President, then we will have an opportunity to effect the type of
changes that will be very important in order to make sure that the
elderly continue to receive their benefits, in order to make sure that
the young are not going to be faced with 50 percent payroll tax
increases at that time.
This is hugely important, and I am immensely proud of Governor Bush
for
[[Page H3410]]
having taken this risk, because the easiest thing to have done with his
lead in the polls would be to play it safe, to just ride it out, to
take into account ``Clinton fatigue'' or whatever else might enter into
this election, and to bring honesty to the White House. But, instead,
he has taken a bold step on this, and I am really proud that we have a
candidate who has brought this to the debate, because I am sure this is
going to be a major focus of debate in every presidential debate.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct. The
first step we have to take is, I used to practice law, and when you put
on a defense, I did not do any criminal law, but even when you put on
any kind of defense, it has to have some credibility. How can you stand
up and credibly defend the current system that we have? How can you
look at the young workers and how can the vice president and his
policies and his policy for Social Security, how can he look at the
women of the country or young workers and say I am going to defend the
status quo, I am going to defend the current system?
You know what, it does not sell. It is not credible. I urge both
sides of the aisle to get together and at least have enough courage to
say, because we are beneficiaries of it, we get to use the Thrift
Savings Program, that we at least have enough courage to stand out
there and say, you know, what is wrong with looking at change? What is
wrong with trying to suggest some improvements for the Social Security
system? What is wrong with doing like Federal employees, all the
Federal employees get to do, and that is personalize their accounts?
What is wrong with standing up and figuring out, hey, there is a better
way to do it?
We are not saying dump this system. We are saying improve this
system. We are certainly not saying, as the gentleman has said, we are
not saying threaten anybody currently on the system. Not at all. In
fact, I think most people we talk to out there want us to improve the
system. They want a system like every one of us sitting in this hall
tonight are benefits of, a Thrift Savings Program. We get personalized
choices, and yet we have a safety net back there. We have an obligation
I think to offer this across the country. Every Federal employee gets
it. What is wrong with offering it to other people?
In conclusion, I would first of all thank the gentleman for joining
me this evening and look forward to further discussions with him.
Number two, I think this is a very good topic for the presidential
debates, because I think our next President has got to take a
leadership role and put this system on a track that improves it, that
puts it on a system that our young people, and even people our age, are
not talking or have a fear that Social Security will not be there for
them. We want a President that will give those people the comfort that
that system will be there for them.
So far, frankly, so far the only candidate that has stepped out there
and said ``I think I have got the system different than the status
quo'' is Governor George Bush of the State of Texas.
Again, I thank my colleague for his participation this evening.
____________________