[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 22 (Thursday, February 26, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H670-H671]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 FUTURE OBLIGATIONS OF SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today and every day, wage-earning, salary-
earning Americans and small business owners across the country will pay 
6.2 percent of every dollar they earn up to $87,400 to Social Security, 
or twice that in the case of the self-employed. This is a heavy burden 
on the working, wage-earning, salary-earning people of America, 
particularly those of modest means. And again, it only falls on income 
below $87,400 so those who earn $3 million or $5 million a year pay a 
tax at a fraction of the rate of someone who earns $30,000 or $40,000 a 
year.
  The theory is that Social Security in collecting these funds will 
collect $180 billion more than necessary to pay this year's benefits. 
That money is supposed to be set aside into a trust fund to meet the 
future obligations of Social Security. If all those moneys that have 
been set aside, and they are, unfortunately, just debt instruments, but 
if those debt instruments were honored, Social Security would have 
adequate funds to pay full benefits until the year 2042 under 
conservative assumptions, perhaps longer, and after that it would have 
a 23 percent shortfall. That is a problem, and we should deal with it.
  But enter Mr. Greenspan, a gentleman who does not need Social 
Security, a gentleman who pays taxes at a fraction of the rate of 
average wage-earning Americans, a gentleman who does not know or 
socialize with anyone who needs Social Security. The fact is 20 percent 
of retired Americans are totally dependent on Social Security, and more 
than half would fall into poverty tomorrow if Social Security benefits 
were not there. Just 3 years ago the great Alan Greenspan said in 
supporting the President's reckless tax cuts which favor the wealthy, 
those who do not pay Social Security taxes in particular, those who 
invest for a living, he said that we could have it all; there was so 
much of a surplus, we could cut taxes on rich people, and we could 
still provide for Social Security benefits in the future.
  Well, 3 years later, confronted with record deficits created by the 
Bush administration, Alan Greenspan, forever consistent, says the tax 
cuts should be made permanent, we should continue to borrow money, 
which we are doing, to finance tax cuts, but we can no longer afford 
Social Security, is what Mr. Greenspan says. So we are going to borrow 
money. In fact, this year we are going to borrow $180 billion that is 
being paid in by working, wage-earning Americans as a surplus into 
Social Security, which will be immediately borrowed and spent. Some 
will be spent on things that are good that the government does; some 
will be spent to give tax cuts to wealthy people.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a new kind of transfer tax. We tax wage-earning, 
salary-earning Americans on every penny of their income. We then 
overtax them,

[[Page H671]]

supposedly to provide their future benefits, borrow that money, and 
then transfer it to wealthy investors who do not pay a penny in Social 
Security taxes.

                              {time}  1415

  This is Mr. Alan Greenspan's world. He hears the pain of those people 
at the top, those who need further tax cuts, those who have done so 
well over the last decade. He is willing to say that we should borrow 
money to finance their tax cuts. He is willing to say we should borrow 
money from the Social Security trust fund to finance those tax cuts for 
wealthy people. But now, astoundingly, he says there is not enough 
money in Social Security to pay benefits. So he just recommends a 
couple of little things. First, we cut cost-of-living adjustments for 
seniors. Well, Social Security is already underadjusted for the cost of 
living of seniors. They have huge increases, in pharmaceutical, medical 
costs and other things, and the 2.1 percent they get does not reflect 
their real cost of living and many saw their Medicare or their 
insurance go up more than their puny increase in Social Security. But 
Mr. Greenspan does not know any of those people. He has never talked to 
them. He is not aware of them. They do not belong to the same clubs 
that he does.
  But he also said in his let-them-eat-cake mode that we should just 
increase the retirement age a little bit more. We are already phasing 
it up to 67. If Mr. Greenspan had to work for a living, work hard like 
a logger or a mill worker or many other professions in this country or 
was in a profession where he could not work forever, unfortunately he 
can as long as George Bush reappoints him, he would realize that it is 
a problem if you increase the retirement age further beyond 67. Many 
Americans cannot physically work that long to collect their benefits 
and many others will not have the opportunity to work that long. But 
Mr. Greenspan is not concerned about those people. It is more important 
to borrow the money from the Social Security trust fund, to bankrupt 
the system in the future to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, and that 
is George Bush's priority, too.

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