[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 113 (Tuesday, September 4, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9016-S9017]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CONGRESS FACES CHALLENGING TIMES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Congress will now reconvene following 
the August recess. We face some challenging and difficult times, 
especially dealing with fiscal policy.
  I noted this weekend on some of the news shows that Bush 
administration spokesperson, Mitch Daniels, who heads the Office of 
Management and Budget, made the following observations about our fiscal 
situation. He said, ``We have the second largest surplus in U.S. 
history. We are awash in cash.'' He used the term ``awash in money.'' 
And then he seemed to say: Well, there is not a problem here because we 
have this very large surplus.
  I think it is interesting to note that the economy in this country is 
weak. It has softened substantially. That which was expected to have 
been in surplus just months ago has now evaporated. The Office of 
Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office both 
acknowledge that the surplus is largely gone. When Mitch Daniels uses 
the term ``surplus'' and says we are ``awash'' in money and we have the 
second biggest surplus in history, what is he talking about? He is 
talking about the Social Security trust fund. He is doing it pretty 
much the same way that Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for the 
Washington Post, has done it. He wrote ``no lock, no box,'' talking 
about a lockbox for Social Security trust funds. Robert Novak, a 
columnist for the Sun Times, wrote a column that says, ``Don't believe 
the Dem scare tactics.'' In effect, Mr. Novak said all of this notion 
about a Social Security trust fund issue is bogus.
  George Will weighed in with essentially the same message. What are 
they talking about? Mr. Novak says that Senator Conrad, my colleague 
from North Dakota, and I are effectively deceiving people about this.
  Let's look at this for a moment. Workers in this country, when they 
get their paycheck, discovers something is taken out of that, which is 
called Social Security taxes. They are told it is going to go into a 
trust fund. This money taken out for Social Security isn't taken out 
for the purpose of paying for the Defense Department, or paying for air 
traffic controllers, or paying for a farm program, or paying for food 
inspection; it is taken out of the paycheck and the worker is told this 
goes into a Social Security trust fund. The word ``trust'' is used in 
the trust fund because it is a trust fund in the classic sense. That 
trust fund invests its money in Government securities.
  The trust fund exists; it is real. If Mr. Novak, for example, 
purchases a U.S. Government savings bond for his grandson next 
Christmas, I hope he will not tell his grandson what he is telling 
readers, that somehow the savings bond he purchased has no value, that 
there is nothing there and the security is meaningless. I hope he will 
not tell his grandson that. We ought not tell the American workers 
that, either.

  When Mr. Mitch Daniels, the head of OMB, says we have the second 
largest surplus in history, what he is saying is, by the way, we have 
these surplus funds in the Social Security trust fund and we view them 
as surplus. The moderator on ``Meet the Press'' said, well, but these 
are trust funds, are they not? Are they not dedicated to Social 
Security? Mr. Daniels said, well, yes, but they are not really 
dedicated to Social Security.
  Well, that is new. The message ought to be, keep your hands off these 
trust funds, to everybody: The administration, the Congress, keep your 
hands off these trust funds. They do not belong to you.
  It is not the Government's money. It is money that came out of 
workers' paychecks to be put in a trust fund for their future. And we 
will need that when the baby boomers retire and put a maximum strain on 
the Social Security system. That is precisely why we are accruing 
surpluses at this point. It is not for the purpose of Mr. Daniels or 
others to say that we have this huge surplus of funds and look at the 
great shape we are in. If a business said, by the way, we made a huge 
profit last year but only if you consider the pension funds of our 
employees, people would say, are you crazy? You cannot consider pension 
funds as part of your profit, and yet that is exactly what some people 
are trying to tell us.
  Will Rogers once said: When there is no place left to spit, you 
either have to swallow your tobacco juice or change with the times. 
Well, there is no place left, and we have to change.
  Four months ago we were told there was going to be a surplus of $125 
billion above the Social Security accounts. That is all gone. It has 
evaporated. It does not exist anymore. The question for the President 
and Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, is how do you reconcile 
all of these interests and needs with the current situation?
  The President wants $18 billion additional spending for defense. The 
surplus that would be used to pay for that does not exist at this 
point. It seems to me the President is going to have to come to 
Congress, Mr. Daniels, Mr. Rumsfeld, and others, and say here is the 
plan by which we are going to pay for that. That plan ought not include 
using the Social Security trust fund.
  I say to my conservative friends who write these columns that you do 
a real disservice, in my judgment, to the facts when you suggest that 
that which we take out of workers' paychecks to be put in a trust fund 
does not really exist in the trust fund. That is not true. The fact is, 
it forces national savings if we have a fiscal policy that recognizes 
these trust funds for the purpose they were collected in the first 
instance.
  Now we have a lot of people who are poised to get their mitts into 
that trust fund and use it for other purposes. I hope the 
administration and the Congress will hold firm and say, keep your hands 
off those trust funds. They do not belong to the Government. They 
belong to the American people. They are the ones who paid those taxes, 
and they were the ones who were told it was going to be put in a trust 
fund. The word ``trust'' ought to mean something.
  I will comment on another issue. This weekend I was enormously 
dismayed to see press reports in the New York Times and the Washington 
Post on the subject of national missile defense and the potential 
buildup of offensive nuclear weapons in China. The New York Times 
headline said: The U.S. will drop objections to China's missile 
buildup: strategy meant to ease Beijing's concern about plans for a 
weapons shield.

  According to the reports, the U.S. will tell China that it will not 
object to a missile buildup by that country. It says, ``The Bush 
administration seeking to overcome Chinese opposition to its missile 
defense program intends to tell leaders in Beijing it has no objections 
to the country's plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear 
missiles.'' It also says, ``One senior official said that in the future 
the United States and China might also discuss resuming underground 
nuclear tests.''
  Let me ask a question: Does anyone think this will be a safer and 
more secure world if we say it does not matter whether China builds 
more offensive nuclear weapons? Does anyone believe it enhances world 
security and makes this a safer place in which to live if we give a 
green light to China and tell that country that it does not matter to 
us, you just go ahead and build up a huge nuclear arsenal? It defies 
all common sense. We ought to be the world

[[Page S9017]]

leader in trying to convince countries not to build up their nuclear 
arsenals, to reduce rather than increase their nuclear arsenals. We 
ought to be the world's leader in saying not only stop nuclear testing, 
which we did a long while ago, but to have everyone, including this 
country, subscribe to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
  Regrettably, this Senate turned down that treaty almost two years 
ago. However, this country still needs to be a leader to stop the 
spread of nuclear weapons. We need to be a leader in a way that helps 
persuade other countries not to build an offensive nuclear threat. Some 
people, including myself, think that is just daft for our country to 
say we would like to spend tens and tens of billions of dollars--some 
say the current proposal would be about $60 billion, other people say 
it would be well over $100 billion--to build a national missile defense 
system and in order to do so we will say to China, by the way, you go 
right ahead and build up your offensive nuclear capabilities.
  What on Earth could we be thinking of? We need to push in the 
opposite direction. We need to say to China and Russia and others, 
which are part of the nuclear club in this world, that we want to build 
down, not up. We do not want to see an increase in offensive nuclear 
weapons.
  This is exactly what many of us have feared, by the way. The 
discussion about abandoning the ABM Treaty, which has been the center 
pole of the tent for arms control and arms reductions, the abandonment 
of that which is being proposed by the White House and some of their 
friends in Congress, is a substantial retreat from this country's 
responsibility to be a leader in trying to stop and reduce the threat 
of nuclear war.
  Is it really going to provide more security and more safety for this 
world if the administration says we do not care about an ABM Treaty, we 
will just abandon it and not care about the consequences. Or if the 
administration says we do not care if our building a national missile 
defense system of some type if it leads Russia to stop cutting its 
nuclear forces and if it leads China to have an offensive nuclear 
weapons buildup. Does it matter to us? It sure does.
  Since the dismantlement of the Soviet Union well over a decade ago 
now, there have been really just two major nuclear superpowers. There 
were two nuclear superpowers involved in the cold war, us and the 
Soviets. Now we alone and the country of Russia have very substantial 
nuclear capability. It is estimated there are over 30,000 nuclear 
weapons in the arsenal of both countries, 30,000 nuclear weapons. We 
need to be reducing the threat of nuclear war. We need to be building 
down and reducing the stockpile of nuclear weapons. We ought not as a 
country be saying it does not matter much to us whether China builds up 
its offensive nuclear weapon capability. It sure ought to matter to us. 
It will be a significant part of our future if we allow that to happen.

  I hope we can have an aggressive discussion on this subject in the 
coming month or so. This country ought to care very much about whether 
the country of China is going to increase and build up its offensive 
nuclear capability. This country ought to care a great deal about that, 
and this country's policy ought not be giving a green light to other 
countries to say we do not mind. We should not be saying: You let us 
build a national missile defense, and we will just say you go right 
ahead and increase your stockpile of nuclear weapons. That is a policy 
that will not create a safer world, in my judgment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Reed). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Nevada.

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