[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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