[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 27 (Tuesday, March 12, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H823-H828]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cantor). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, let me say in the beginning that myself and
other Democrats over the last week, and certainly over the next few
weeks, will take to the floor repeatedly to bring up the issue of the
Social Security trust fund, and our concern that the President and the
Republican leadership in the House are very determined to push for
changes in Social Security that would lead to privatization, and at the
same time, the budget that the Republican leadership will bring up to
the floor, I understand it will be coming up as early as next week,
unfortunately goes into deficit and effectively spends the Social
Security trust fund, once again, we have not had this for a couple of
years, in order to pay for current expenses.
The Republican proposal to privatize Social Security, as well as the
proposal to spend the Social Security trust fund for basically ongoing
government operations unrelated to a retirement benefit, both of these
proposals by the Republican leadership in the House and by the
President, will undermine Social Security and make it more difficult
for Social Security to remain solvent, and basically shorten the time
before we face a crisis in Social Security when benefits will be cut or
will no longer be available.
That is the concern that I and other Democrats have, and we will be
speaking out against it because we believe very strongly that none of
these things should happen, that we should not privatize Social
Security and that we should not be spending the Social Security trust
fund to pay for ongoing expenses.
Let me start, Mr. Speaker, by pointing out that Social Security is
probably the most successful social program the Federal Government has
ever implemented. It provides an unparalleled safety net for the vast
majority of America's seniors. For two-thirds of the elderly, Social
Security is their major source of income. For one-third of the elderly,
Social Security is virtually their only source of income. And for these
reasons, and a great many others, we must do everything in our power to
protect and strengthen the existing Social Security program for the
short and the long term.
Mr. Speaker, I gathered some information that gives us some idea
about the importance of the Social Security program and also how
successful it is, how unique it is, and I wanted to go through a little
of that, if I could, in a little detail, not a great deal of detail.
Why is Social Security important? As I said, it is the single largest
source of retirement income in the United States. For six in ten
seniors, Social Security provides half or more of their total income.
Among elderly widows, Social Security provides nearly three-quarters of
their income, on average. And four in ten widows rely on Social
Security to provide 90 percent or more of their income.
But it is not just a retirement income program. About 30 percent of
Social Security beneficiaries receive disability or survivor benefits.
We tend to forget that. We tend to think it is only a program for
seniors. For a 27-year-old worker with a spouse and two children,
Social Security provides the equivalent of a $403,000 life insurance
policy or a $353,000 disability insurance policy. The vast majority of
workers would be unable to obtain similar coverage through the private
market.
Social Security is also family insurance. It provides benefits for
elderly widows and young parents who have lost a spouse. It provides a
dependable monthly income to children who have lost a parent to death
or disability. It even pays benefits to those who become severely
disabled as children and remain dependent, as adults, on a parent who
receives Social Security.
Now, a lot of people, and I find this to be often true about some of
my Republican colleagues, they will say, Well, Social Security is just
another government program, it is a waste of money, it is not
administered well. We hear these kinds of criticisms. The reality is
very different. There is no government program that is more successful
than Social Security.
{time} 2000
It is the single most effective antipoverty program. Its benefits
lift over 11 million seniors out of poverty. Thanks to Social Security,
the poverty rate of elderly persons is only 8 percent. Without it,
nearly half of retirees would live in poverty. That was the case before
we set it up. More than half of the people over 65 lived in poverty
before Social Security came on board.
Over the course of its 67-year history, Congress has prudently
managed the Social Security program. Each year the Social Security
board of trustees issues a report showing short-range and long-range
75-year projections of the income and costs of the system. Congress
uses these projections to balance the promise to pay future benefits
against workers' desire and ability to pay for them, and it has
adjusted the program periodically in light of changing economic and
demographic conditions. So we have had to change it, but we have always
changed it in a positive way.
Finally, I would stress that Social Security is administered very
efficiently. Only one penny of every dollar Social Security spends is
for administration. The rest goes directly to beneficiaries in their
monthly checks.
Let me say just a few more things about the uniqueness of Social
Security. It is nearly universal. Over 95 percent of all workers are
covered by it. In contrast, less than 50 percent of workers have
employer pension coverage on their jobs. It is also totally portable.
It goes with a worker from job to job. Traditionally, private sector
pension plans lose value if a worker changes a job. It is also, and
this is very important, a defined benefit. That is, its benefits are
determined according to the level of a worker's earnings and years of
work.
So this type of pension system provides income continuity in
retirement by replacing a fixed percentage of a worker's preretirement
earnings. Benefits are paid as long as the worker and his or her spouse
lives and the monthly
[[Page H824]]
benefit amount is predictable and steady. This is very different in
contrast to a defined contribution system like a 401(k) or an
individual savings account which can pay out only what is in the
account. If a worker did not contribute in certain years or has poor
investment results or just the misfortune of retiring in a down market,
he must get along on less. If the account is exhausted before a worker
reaches the end of his life, she or he will have nothing left to live
on.
The idea of Social Security is that it is an insurance policy. It
pays benefits whenever an insured-against event happens. It protects
against the risk of having low income in old age, and it spreads risk
broadly throughout society to lower the cost of these protections and
to make them affordable for all.
I just mention this because sometimes I think that some of my
Republican colleagues think that Social Security does not work. It does
work. The scary thing is that to my great disappointment, we now have
both the President when he established his Social Security commission
and now the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, and
other Republicans are promoting Social Security privatization. What do
they mean when they talk about privatization? It sounds like a nice
idea, privatization. Basically, they are talking about replacing all or
part of the current Social Security program with a system of individual
retirement accounts.
I just want to read to my colleagues, if I could, this is the New
York Times, February 16, about a month ago, a little less than a month
ago, the gentleman from Texas called for a new push on Social Security,
and a big part of that was the idea of privatization. His proposal
allows workers to invest part of their Social Security money in the
stock market, a change that I believe would mean deep cuts in
guaranteed benefits and create big financial risks for retirees. This
is what he is proposing. This is what he keeps pushing.
If I could just give a couple of concerns about the privatization,
then I would yield to the gentleman from Arkansas. I am pleased to see
that he has joined me. If you think about diverting the funds from
Social Security into individually owned accounts, what you are doing is
transferring investment risks from a pool of workers to the individual.
This is not risk free. If you start having this private account where
you have control over how you invest it, there is a certain amount of
risk involved for the individual.
All of the evidence shows that plans that allow people to divert part
of their payroll taxes into private accounts not only runs a risk for
the worker but it aggravates Social Security's financing problems. If
some of the funds coming into Social Security over the next 75 years
are diverted away from the program and into private accounts, then it
is obvious that there are going to be less funds available to pay out
future benefits for the people that are depending on Social Security.
For example, if 2 percentage points of the current 12.4 percent payroll
tax were diverted into private accounts, then the Social Security trust
funds would be exhausted in 2024, 14 years earlier than now expected.
In short, if funds are diverted away from Social Security programs as
they currently exist, the changes that are already needed to return
Social Security to fiscal soundness will have to be more severe.
What I am saying is that not only by diverting some of the Social
Security money to private accounts there is more of a risk for that
individual who is doing that, but since there is less money in the
Social Security trust fund, the problem that we expect in about 30
years or so when there may not be as much money in Social Security and
it may not be able to pay out the benefits is only going to be
aggravated. That time will be much earlier because those funds are
going to be diverted.
I have a lot of other things I want to talk about, but I see that my
colleague from Arkansas is here. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas
(Mr. Ross).
Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). It is
good to join him this evening as we talk about the future and the
security of Social Security, something that so many of our seniors rely
on as their only source of income as they grow old and try their best
to make ends meet. I think we have got a train wreck waiting to happen.
To set the stage for what I am about to say, I want to start by
mentioning this about the debt, because they are related. A lot of the
politicians in Washington these days seem to not want to talk about the
debt. The debt in this country is $5.7 trillion. If President Bush's
fiscal year 2003 budget is passed, it will grow by some $100 billion.
What does that mean for all of us in our daily lives? Some people in
this country think we spend too much money on food stamps. That is $2
billion a month. Some people in this country think we spend too much
money on foreign aid. That is $1 billion a month. Mr. Speaker, we spend
$1 billion every single day in America just paying interest, not
principal, just interest on the national debt.
What is $1 billion? If I put that in a calculator, I get that little
E at the end. What helped me bring it home, I was recently touring a
brand new, state-of-the-art elementary school in Monticello, Arkansas.
As I walked through that building, I learned that it cost $5 million.
And it hit me. We could build 200 brand new, state-of-the-art
elementary schools every single day in America just with the interest
we are paying on the national debt. Just with the interest we are
paying in a few days we could create a program that would truly
modernize Medicare to include medicine for our seniors. I have got two,
actually three interstates pending in my congressional district. Give
me a couple of weeks of that and I could build one of them. Give me a
day and a half and I could build the other two. That is having an
enormous drain on our finances.
I bring that up to set the stage for what I am about to say, because
my grandparents left this country much better than they found it for my
parents and their generation. My parents have left this country much
better than they found it for my generation. I think we have a duty and
an obligation as citizens and certainly as Members of the United States
House of Representatives to ensure that we leave this country much
better than we found it for people like my two children who are back at
home tonight with my wife in Prescott, Arkansas.
The reason I point that out is because not only is that something
that our children are going to inherit if we do not address it and
address it soon, but they are also going to inherit a Social Security
system that is bankrupt. When Social Security was created, we had one
person drawing benefits for every 30 or so paying in. Sometime between
2011 and 2016, depending on whose numbers you want to believe, we are
going to have more people earning Social Security benefits than paying
into the Social Security system. And everyone agrees that by 2038,
Social Security as we know it today will no longer be there. Social
Security will be broke by the year 2038. That may seem like a lifetime
away, but if each of you will stop for a minute and think back to 1964,
I bet every one of you in this room can remember something you did that
year. 1964 to 2002, 2002 to 2038, it is the same time frame in terms of
the length of time that will go by. 2038 will be here before we know
it.
And when I say Social Security is broke in 2038, that is assuming
that the $1.2 trillion that we have borrowed from the Social Security
trust fund, the government has borrowed $1.2 trillion from the Social
Security trust fund and it will be broke in 2038 even if the government
figures out a way to pay that money back by then. It is still broke in
2038. I know some folks will say, That's how you have to invest Social
Security trust fund money, is in the government.
I do not argue with that, but I do argue and make this point: I have
got a loan at a bank and I think most of you in this room probably owe
money. When you go to the bank and sign a loan, normally they want to
know how you are going to pay it back. Yet we continue to borrow money,
to write IOUs to the Social Security trust fund with no provision, no
plans, no idea on how that money is ever going to be paid back. I think
that is wrong, and that is why the first bill I filed as a Member of
Congress was a bill to tell the politicians in Washington to keep their
hands off the Social Security trust fund and to keep their hands off
the Medicare trust fund.
[[Page H825]]
I believe privatizing Social Security even complicates and makes this
train wreck waiting to happen much worse. The idea that you can choose
even a small percentage of your Social Security moneys to play with in
the stock market simply does not work. Let me tell you why. We would
all like to believe, and believe me there are a lot of people in
government that want you to believe, that there is a Social Security
account set up with your name on it and all the money that you have had
withheld and all the moneys that the employer matches are sitting there
in a fund with your name on it. But that is not how Social Security
works. Our parents have worked and paid into the system, and the money
that they have paid in has gone to take care of their parents and
grandparents.
Now my generation is working and the money that we are paying in to
the Social Security trust fund goes to take care of my parents and
grandparents. That is why education is so critical to our children's
future. We are trying to ensure that our children can get a good, sound
education so they too one day can grow up and have a good job and pay
into the Social Security trust fund to take care of us when we grow
old. And the cycle will continue.
If you take even a percentage of that and let those who are paying
into the Social Security trust fund play with that money in the stock
market, it causes a real problem, because that is not how Social
Security works. So that is a major concern.
Another major concern is one, what I call a wake-up call that I hope
we all receive from Enron. There is a reason that you can make a lot of
money. There is a reason you can lose a lot of money when it comes to
stock. It is a risky business.
I believe that our government should provide incentives to encourage
small businesses and businesses of all sizes to provide 401(k)s, simple
IRAs, and other saving opportunities, because Social Security was never
intended to be your only source of income when you retire. I own a
small business along with my wife back home in Prescott, Arkansas, a
small town in rural south Arkansas. We have 12 employees. For those 12
employees, we do something that a lot of small businesses either cannot
do or refuse to do, and that is provide an alternative retirement plan
that hopefully someday will go a long way toward subsidizing their
Social Security income. It is a simple IRA. It is created, much like a
401(k), for small businesses. We do have a duty and an obligation in
Congress to find ways to encourage businesses of all sizes to provide
those kinds of saving opportunities for their employees. But it should
be above and beyond and separate from Social Security.
This is especially important to me, because my grandmother, I am very
fortunate and blessed, she is still living. She is 90, she is blind,
she is not in the best of health anymore, but she has lived from Social
Security check to Social Security check.
{time} 2015
My grandfather died when I was 1 year old and my grandmother first
learned how to drive a car. She then got her GED, and then she went to
nursing school and came back to our hometown and was a nurse for 20-
some-odd years, a hospital that did not have a retirement plan, a job
which required her to save what little she could and then get by from
Social Security check to Social Security check when she finally
retired.
I understand what that Social Security check means to our seniors. We
need to see those checks grow. We need to save Social Security, and for
the life of me, I am convinced that any form or fashion of privatizing
Social Security, taking Social Security money and putting it in the
Enrons of the world, will do nothing but reduce benefits and risk the
future of Social Security.
When you look at it, coupled with pensions and personal savings
accounts, Social Security benefits form the three-legged retirement
stool on which many seniors rely. I do strongly support encouraging
workers to save and invest more of their income, but to take money out
of Social Security through privatization would undermine the security
that Social Security was created to provide, especially for women and
minorities, that on average earn less and have less to save. Women,
African Americans, Hispanics are more likely to lack pension benefits,
and also are the least likely to receive interest, dividends or pension
income. As a result, these groups have a large stake in the solvency of
the Social Security program.
Women particularly benefit from Social Security. Because of Social
Security's progressive benefit formula, lower-wage workers receive
higher dollars in Social Security benefits. Women who earned lower
wages and/or had fewer years in the work force, perhaps because they
were at home raising a family, receive larger monthly benefit amounts.
In addition, due to their often unique working patterns and lower
average wages, women typically have lower rates of pension coverage and
income than do men.
According to the Center on Budget, Policy and Priorities, Social
Security replaces 54 percent of the average lifetime earnings for
female retirees, compared to only 41 percent of the earnings for male
retirees. In addition, privatizing Social Security does not consider
disability and survivor benefits, both of which are more often utilized
by women and minorities.
We must ensure the solvency of Social Security, but we should not
undermine the protections or the guaranteed benefit the program
provides to all seniors. Similar to the prescription drug debate,
Congress and the President must begin to make tough choices and put our
energy into enacting real protections for the Social Security system
and a quality affordable prescription drug benefit.
We need to have an open and an honest debate to find common ground
and common sense solutions to really shore up the Social Security
system. We should not wait until after the November elections to talk
about this issue. We owe it to our seniors and to the working people of
America to take on this issue and make sure that Social Security is
there for them and their children and, yes, their grandchildren.
The American people deserve to know where we stand. I am proud to go
on record as standing against privatization of Social Security and
fighting to ensure the future solvency of Social Security for my
parents, my grandparents, and yours.
Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas, because I
think that he really laid out very effectively what the Social Security
program is all about and the problem that we face with solvency, which,
of course, is still 30 years away, where we begin to not have enough
money to pay out benefits. But if we start to do privatization, if we
start to spend this trust fund, which, as you know, the budget that the
Republicans, I guess, have come up with tonight that we are going to be
voting on next week essentially spends a lot of the Social Security
trust fund to pay for current expenses.
But if I could, I wanted to just develop a couple of points that the
gentleman made about the risk of privatization, the impact on women,
the impact particularly on minorities, because these are serious
concerns.
One of the things particularly I thought was interesting that the
gentleman talked about was the impact on women. I think a lot of people
forget about the progressive method that is employed in Social
Security. In other words, if you are paying, as the gentleman said
earlier, a lot of people think, okay, I have this account where my
money is put aside and that is the money that I get paid back.
It does not work that way. The current workers are paying for the
people who are now retired, and the fact of the matter is that a lot of
the people, particularly low-wage earners that paid less into Social
Security, are getting a lot more than they paid into it. That is
particularly true about women.
These are some statistics that we had, that women constitute the
majority of elderly Social Security beneficiaries. I guess most people
realize that about 60 percent of Social Security recipients over the
age of 65 and 72 percent above the age of 85 are women. But because
women, on average, earn less than men, it means they are counting upon
the Social Security progressive benefit structure to ensure they have
an adequate income in retirement.
They are also less likely to be covered by an employer-sponsored
pension
[[Page H826]]
plan, so they are even more dependent on Social Security, because they
do not have a pension. Also women live longer than men, we know that,
so they have to make their retirement savings stretch over a longer
period of time.
So if you did the kinds of privatization that the Republican
leadership and the President are talking about, where you have these
individual account balances, and the annual benefits they yield are a
direct result of the deposit, the kind of thing the gentleman said
people think we have with Social Security, but we do not. Because women
earn less and spend less time in the work force, they would have less
to deposit; but because they live longer in retirement, they would have
to stretch out those payments from their accounts over more years. They
would have to live on smaller benefits from smaller accounts,
essentially.
It is the very nature of Social Security, that it is not like an
individual account and that you are actually getting, even though you
may not have paid in as long and may not have paid as much, more as a
benefit, because of the progressive nature of it. That particularly
impacts women, because they tend to be lower-wage earners and because
they live longer.
The other thing with the risk, I am amazed, because I live in New
Jersey, and I saw a statistic once that said in New Jersey people tend
to invest in the stock market even more so than most other States,
probably maybe because we are near Wall Street or whatever. It is
probably true for New York as well, but definitely it is true for New
Jersey. Until recently, I think, over the last 10, 12 years, people
thought, why can I not take my money out and invest it in the stock
market? I am going to get all kinds of returns on my investment.
But if you look at the trend over the lifetime of, say, Social
Security workers, those who are now retired, those who are over 65,
there is no indication by investing in the stock market they would have
benefited and would have a lot more money available today than if they
were able to take their Social Security over that period of time and
invest it in the stock market. I just want to give a few statistics.
Basically, this is the information on the stock market that I thought
was interesting. These are just some for the last couple of years.
Between March 2000 and April 2001, basically the index fell by 424
points, or 28 percent. If Social Security had been privatized, a worker
who had his or her individual account invested in a fund that mirrored
the stock market and who retired in April 2001 would have 28 percent
less to live on for the rest of his or her life.
If you look over the last century, there were 15 years in the past
century, 1908 to 1912, 1937 to 1939, 1965 through 1966 and 1968 through
1973 in which the real value of the stock market fell by more than 40
percent over the preceding decade. So anybody who tells you, oh, you
know, if I had invested my money in an individual private account
rather than Social Security, I would be much better off, you cannot
show that. It is just not true.
The other danger, of course, is that not everybody would necessarily
invest in a mutual fund; they would pick and choose stocks, and there
is a certain risk involved in that. Some people come back to me and
say, Congressman Pallone, Why are you so worried about this, because,
you know, everybody should be able to make their own choice? If
somebody wants to take their Social Security and invest it in a private
account, they lose their shirt in the stock market, that is their
problem. You cannot be sort of paternalistic and worry about that
person.
My response is that is, very nice, but those people who lose their
shirt in the stock market and do not have the retirement benefits,
where are they going to go? They are going to come back to Congress and
say, wait a minute, I invested my Social Security in the stock market.
I lost my shirt. I am out on the street. What are you going to do to
help me? The burden then comes back to the government again.
So I just do not buy this idea that we are supposed to say okay,
everybody makes their own decisions, and somehow this is the right
thing to do ideologically.
The bottom line is that Social Security is like an insurance pool,
and everybody pools their resources and everybody benefits; and if you
start taking out pieces and let people make their own decisions about
their money, then you run the risk that a lot of them are not going to
have their money and they are going to come back to the government and
look for a bailout later.
I do not know. I know a lot of arguments are used by our Republican
colleagues to justify this privatization, but I do not think they are
legitimate arguments if you look at the impact and if you seriously
look at what might happen if that were to occur.
The other thing, of course, that concerns me right now is that, as
the gentleman knows, for the last few years we were basically balancing
the budget, and we had a little bit of a surplus; and under the
previous administration, under President Clinton, in the last few years
of his administration, as the surplus grew, we were actually taking
some of that surplus and we were investing it or using it to pay off
the debt. The idea was that it would shore up the Social Security fund,
and the outyears, the years, as the gentleman says, when Social
Security would not have enough money to pay out, were getting further
and further away.
But now, with the budget that we are going to get from the Republican
leadership and from the President, tonight I think it is already out
and it will be voted on the floor next week, by spending the Social
Security trust fund for current expenses unrelated to Social Security,
that outyear when we are going to start to run out of money is going to
get closer and closer; and privatization only aggravates it all the
more if we were to move in that direction.
So these are the kinds of things that obviously we worry about as
Democrats. I think it is no surprise that we are seeing a lot of our
colleagues come on the Floor and talk about these concerns, because it
is a very scary thing for the average senior citizen, the average
person receiving Social Security, and I think we have got to make the
public understand what is happening with Social Security, what is
happening with the trust fund, because I just do not think a lot of
people are necessarily aware of it.
I do not know if the gentleman finds that to be true at his town
meetings or whatever. I think there is a lot of confusion on the part
of the public about what is happening with Social Security, and some of
these proposals that are out there in terms of where we are going to go
and how we are going to make it solvent. I do not know if the gentleman
wants to comment on that at all.
Mr. ROSS. Well, I thank the gentleman. I guess the reason that we
have gotten to where we are on this discussion about the idea of
privatizing Social Security really started last year when President
Bush established a 16-member Commission on Social Security. The
commission was given the specific task of spelling out how a Social
Security privatization plan should be designed and implemented.
In December, the commission put forward three different options for
partially privatizing Social Security. It did not, however, accomplish
the goals of identifying the design and implementation of
privatization. In fact, the commission acknowledged that such a
profound change in the Nation's retirement system, commonly referred to
as Social Security, would eventually cost at least $2 trillion, and
that is with a T, at least $2 trillion, though the commission did not
suggest how to pay for it.
So I think it is important that we do have an open and honest debate
that fully discloses the risks associated with privatization, and
develop a true retirement security plan for the American people. The
American people deserve a national dialogue outside of the election
year antics that will begin in the next few months.
The time for that dialogue to begin is now. The gentleman from
California (Mr. Matsui), the ranking member of the Committee on Ways
and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, I think he said it best when
he said, ``The Enron collapse has made it abundantly clear that defined
benefit plans such as Social Security have a fundamental role to play
in retirement savings.
{time} 2030
In light of Enron, it is especially critical that we discuss openly
the risk,
[[Page H827]]
the cost, and benefit cuts inherent in Social Security privatization.''
Mr. Speaker, this is a big issue. What the President proposes with
his FY03 budget is, for the first time, I believe since 1997, that we
go back to the days of deficit spending. The FY03 budget will put us
further in debt by $100 billion; we are already $5.7 trillion in debt,
so I guess that means we will be $5.8 trillion in debt, on top of the
$1 billion we pay every single day in America, simply paying interest
on the national debt; money that could go for education, that could go
for highways, that could go for infrastructure that creates economic
opportunities for people from all walks of life; money that could go to
truly pass my bill, my bipartisan bill that I have filed with the
gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), that truly creates a Medicare
part D.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I am a cosponsor of that bill.
Mr. ROSS. That is right, and I thank the gentleman from New Jersey
for that.
But that is the kind of thing we could be doing with that $1 billion
a day that we are paying interest on the national debt. Believe me,
when the President is right, I will stand and say he is. I give him an
A-plus for this war on terrorism. We all want to know life in America
once again the way we did prior to September 11, and I give him an A-
plus on that. I have voted with him in the past 14 months on many other
issues, but this is an issue where I think he is wrong. Not only does
he propose in the FY03 budget that we go $100 billion further into
debt, he is asking that we raise the debt limit, not by $100 billion,
but by $750 billion, with every single dime of that coming from where?
The Social Security trust fund, with no provision, no plan on how in
the world we pay it back or someday our kids or grandkids are forced to
pay it back.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman raises a number of things I
just want to comment on.
First of all, when the gentleman talked about the debt limit, I
thought it was very interesting that today pretty much Treasury
Secretary O'Neill said that they are not going to bring up a vote on
the debt limit because I think that the Republican leadership and the
President do not want to show that they have to raise the debt limit;
they are sort of hoping somehow it is going to go away, and they were
suggesting that they were going to have to tap into Federal retiree
funds, retirement funds, in order to postpone raising the debt limit,
which is sort of a unique budget trick. But I guess we could go on
doing that for a few months, and this way we sort of get away, maybe
until after the election, and we get away with sort of showing that we
have gone further into debt and we have to raise the debt limit. I do
not know what the implications are for Federal retirees, but I am sure
they are not too happy with the idea that their retirement funds are
going to be played around with in this way in an effort to try to mask
the fact that this debt limit has to be raised because the budget, the
President's budget, raises the amount of debt.
The other thing is the gentleman mentioned the commission, the
President's Commission on Social Security; and, to his credit, when he
was first elected, he set up this commission with the idea that we were
going to have this full-fledged debate on the future of Social
Security. But all of a sudden, as the commission met, and I guess there
was some criticism of having to deal with that issue of Social Security
that might be politically unwise, they came up with a myriad of
proposals which, although they favor privatization, are not at all
clear where they are going.
I think one of the fears that a lot of the Democrats have is that
even though we are hearing about debating Social Security and
privatizing Social Security, that maybe what the Republican leadership
really wants to do is postpone this whole thing until after the
election so that they do not have to deal with it now.
I agree that I think that is unfortunate, because this is not going
to go away. The actions that the President and the Republican
leadership are taking with the budget, with the deficit, with
essentially spending Social Security trust funds, are making the
situation with Social Security worse. So they cannot keep postponing
the inevitable.
The other thing that came up, which I do not know if we are going to
get to it or not, but the gentleman certainly heard about it, all of us
have, was that the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Armey), proposed this idea of this certificate. We were going to vote
on a resolution on the floor, which is a little different than a bill,
a resolution that would authorize the printing of these certificates
that would go out to everybody over 65 telling them that their Social
Security benefits would be guaranteed for the rest of their life. Then
we found out that it would cost like $40 million or $50 million that
would come out of the trust fund as well.
So again, I think that there is a lot of politics being played around
here. We do not need these certificates. We need to have some action to
actually deal with this issue in an effective way, other than just
spending more of the trust fund and talking about privatization.
The gentleman raised some of these issues, and I think that we kind
of have to keep bringing it up because of our concern over where all of
this is going.
Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. Let me just tell
the gentleman that I am new to Washington. I still believe people can
run for public office and get involved for the right reasons and really
make a difference in people's lives. After 14 months here, I can tell
my colleague that I am sick and tired of all the partisan bickering
that goes on in our Nation's Capital. It should not be about what makes
the Democrats look good or bad, and it should not be about what makes
the Republicans look good or bad. It ought to be about doing right by
the people who sent us here to represent them.
I can tell the gentleman that America is at war. We are spending $1
billion a day simply paying interest on the national debt. We owe the
Social Security trust fund $1.2 trillion; and even if it is paid back,
it is broke by 2038. There are a lot of critical issues facing this
country and its future. My parents left a better country for me than
what they found; and I am committed, I am dedicated, I believe it is a
duty and an obligation, to ensure that we are able to leave this
country just a little bit better off than we found it for our children
and for our grandchildren and for the many, many generations to come.
The gentleman mentioned the guarantee certificate. Let me just tell
my colleague that unfortunately my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle have proposed mailing a bogus Social Security ``guarantee''
certificate. It is kind of like the President's idea of this so-called
discount prescription drug card as a Bandaid approach, at best, to
providing our seniors with the Medicare coverage they need when it
comes to medicine. When we created Medicare, we did not say, here is a
discount card, go to your doctor and cut the best deal you can, or here
is a discount card, go to the hospital and cut the best deal you can.
We truly provided a form of health care. Today's Medicare was designed
for yesterday's medical care, and that is why I feel so strongly about
the need to quit talking about modernizing Medicare to include medicine
for our seniors and get on with getting it done.
Mr. Speaker, when we take a look at this Social Security guarantee
certificate that the Republicans are proposing, it is not worth the
paper it is printed on. Recently, the new Social Security
Administration's Commissioner, JoAnn Barnhart, questioned the merits of
such a guarantee certificate. In a memo to his Republican colleagues,
Majority Leader Armey said that he is pushing the guarantee certificate
as political cover for Republicans as we enter an election year.
Mr. Speaker, saving Social Security should not be about politics. It
is much greater than any of us that serve up here. Saving Social
Security for our seniors and for many generations to come is much more
important than any of us standing for reelection. The American people,
our seniors, they do not want a gimmick. They want a Congress that will
be responsible, that will stand up, and that will truly protect Social
Security. That is the kind of Congress I want to serve in.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments.
[[Page H828]]
I want to conclude this evening, but I just wanted to point out again
that that is why so many of us on the Democratic side have been up here
over the last couple of weeks, and we are going to continue to do it,
because we will have the budget come up next week, and we really do
want to have a debate on the substance of Social Security and where we
are going with it and not just having this certificate that is going to
be out there and giving people this idea that everything is fine, when
it is not. So we are going to continue to be here.
I just want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas, and
point out that as Democrats, we do think this is a very important issue
that needs to be openly debated; and we are going to be here every
night, if necessary, to make the point over the next few weeks.
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