[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 73 (Thursday, June 6, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3283-H3284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CLOCKING THE RAID ON SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about Social 
Security, the premier program of the last century, which has helped to 
raise a generation of our seniors out of poverty. Most seniors in 
America receive upwards of perhaps $580 per month. For them it is a 
lifeline, and without Social Security and Medicare, they simply could 
not survive.
  Today this House debated what to do with the estate tax, some call it 
a death tax, but assets accumulated by very large interests, and we 
heard the debate. But what is important to point out about this debate 
is that because the Bush administration and its allies inside this 
Chamber cannot afford to pay for the tax benefits being given, 
especially to the very super-rich in our country, they have raided the 
Social Security trust fund consistently this fiscal year, and, as of 
this week, June 5 and counting, they have taken from the Social 
Security trust fund already $207,232,876,712.
  This chart and those that will follow in the weeks to come will clock 
the Republican raid on Social Security. The amount that has been taken 
to date averages thus far $717 per American citizen, and the numbers 
are still being counted as the days tick on.
  As long as Republicans continue to raid the Social Security trust 
fund in violation of the promises not to raid the trust fund dollars 
contained in what was called an accounting lockbox, it is my intention 
to be here on the floor clocking their raid with our Social Security 
debt clock.
  I also will be going through the history of who created Social 
Security for our country and who has historically opposed it. In fact, 
in 1935 in the deliberations in the Committee on Ways and Means not far 
from this floor, the Republican Members of the House Committee on Ways 
and Means voted to kill the original bill that created the Social 
Security program that our parents and grandparents and great-
grandparents have benefited from since the mid-1930s.
  When the bill moved to the floor, it was Democrats that passed that 
bill. I think it is very important that that history go on record, 
because if you look at what has been happening with the accumulation of 
additional debt in our country, and I put this chart up here as 
illustrative, we look at the accumulation of debt, this goes back to 
President Johnson. For a long time, because of the Vietnam War, and 
going into the Carter years, the recessions that resulted from rising 
oil prices, and then into the Reagan-Bush years when we had the huge 
defense buildup and the Persian Gulf War, our Nation went deeply into 
the red. We have over $6 trillion of debt that we are now financing in 
this country. But during the Clinton years, with the budgets that were 
passed in cooperation with this Congress, we were able to move to a 
point where we were actually, for the first time in modern history, 
accumulating surpluses, until now, with the inauguration of President 
Bush, and we are beginning to move into a deficit position again, and 
very severely so, in a very short period of time.
  The funds that are available to borrow against for various purposes, 
whether it is giving tax cuts to people like Ken Lay, who will get over 
$350 million additional in a tax refund because of the tax bill passed 
earlier this year, or the estate tax that was voted here today, that 
money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the lockbox 
that almost every single Member here voted to protect. It is beyond my 
imagination why anyone would want to vote in that manner.

                              {time}  1800

  But until this administration and House Republicans put seniors first 
and reverse this raid and commit to saving Social Security as we have 
promised, I will be here to tell the truth to the American people, 
using these red numbers and this debt clock to show just how much is 
being raided.
  Today in the Washington Post there is a story called ``The State of 
the Estate Tax.'' I will enter it into the Record, but what is really 
interesting about this is it talks about some of the major 
beneficiaries of the bill that passed here by a very thin margin this 
afternoon. The very people that are raiding Social Security are taking 
care of some of their best friends. Here is one of them. Gary Winnick 
of Global Crossing fame, with assets of nearly 3 quarters of a billion 
dollars, will probably yield $366 million in so-called estate tax 
savings. Dennis Kozlowski from Tyco International, which has run into a 
little difficulty, $149 million.
  Though my time has expired for this evening, all I have to say is the 
Democratic Party historically has been the party that has believed in 
and supported Social Security. We do not support borrowing from the 
trust fund in order to give tax benefits to the super rich.
  More on this story later.
  The information mentioned earlier follows:

                [From the Washington Post, June 6, 2002]

                      The State of the Estate Tax

       The House begins debate today on President Bush's proposal 
     to make permanent last year's elimination of the estate tax, 
     or ``death tax'' as Republicans call it. Bush will be in Des 
     Moines on Friday to tout the effort, which would benefit 
     family farmers. Apparently, eliminating the tax would also 
     benefit some non-farmers--some of them in the Bush 
     administration.
       Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) asked his staff to assemble 
     a chart estimating just how much more the heirs of Bush, Vice 
     President Cheney and members of the Cabinet would get if the 
     estate tax were permanently eliminated. Waxman's aides also 
     applied their calculators on the balance sheets of former 
     Enron executives and the executives of other companies in the 
     news.
       The winners? Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's heirs 
     could gain as much as $120

[[Page H3284]]

     million from the repeal, with heirs of Treasury Secretary 
     Paul H. O'Neill getting as much as $51 million more and heirs 
     of Cheney getting up to $40 million more. Heirs of Enron's 
     Kenneth L. Lay would get $59 million more. Bush, a relative 
     pauper, would leave behind an extra sum of no more than $10 
     million if the tax were eliminated.
       The White House said Waxman's analysis was beside the 
     point.
       ``Failure to make the tax cuts permanent would increase the 
     taxes on 104 million Americans,'' Bush spokeswoman Claire 
     Buchan said. ``The president thinks that's wrong and that 
     it's wrong to double-tax families, especially at the time of 
     death.''

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                                                    Assets                    Estimated estate tax savings
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush Administration Official:
    President Bush.....................  $11.1 million-$21.6 million.  $4.6 million-$9.9 million.
    Vice President Cheney..............  $19.3 million-$81.8 million.  $8.7 million-$40 million.
    Defense Secretary Donald H.          $61 million-$242.5 million..  $29.6 million-$120 million.
     Rumsfeld.
    Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill.  $62.8 million-$103.3 million  $30.5 million-$50.7 million.
    OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr  $18.1 million-$75.3 million.  $8.1 million-$36.7 million.
    Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.  $19.5 million-$68.9 million.  $8.8 million-$33.5 million.
    Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans.  $11.4 million-$45.1 million.  $4.8 million-$21.6 million.
    EPA Administrator Christine Todd     $6.4 million-$20.3 million..  $2.3 million-$9.2 million.
     Whitman.
    U.S. Trade Representative Robert B.  $3.3 million-$13 million....  $555,000-$5.6 million.
     Zoellick.
    Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao.....  $2.3 million-$5.4 million...  $123,000-$1.8 million.
    HUD Secretary Mel R. Martinez......  $1.6 million-$4 million.....  $0-$870,000.
    VA Secretary Anthony J. Principi...  $1.6 million-$3.6 million...  $0-$690,000.
    HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson....  $1.3 million-$3.3 million...  $0-$555,000.
    Attorney General John D. Aschroft..  $1.1 million-$3.3 million...  $0-$555,000.
    Education Secretary Roderick R.      $1.1 million-$2.9 million...  $0-$377,000.
     Paige.
    Agriculture Secretary Ann M.         $680,000-$2 million.........  $0.
     Veneman.
    Interior Secretary Gail A. Norton..  $207,000-$681,000...........  $0.
    Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham...  $224,000-$664,000...........  $0.
    Transportation Secretary Norman Y.   $220,000-$655,000...........  $0.
     Mineta.
Company Executives:
    Gary Winnick (Global Crossing).....  $734 million................  $366 million.
    L. Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco Intl.)...  $300 million................  $149 million.
    Kenneth L. Lay (Enron).............  $119 million................  $59 million.
    Charles Watson (Dyengy)............  $112 million................  $55 million.
    Bernard J. Ebbers (WorldCom).......  $78 million.................  $38 million.
    Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy).....  $54 million.................  $26 million.
    Richard McGinn (Lucent)............  $25 million.................  $12 million.
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