[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 105 (Wednesday, September 8, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H6885-H6889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Carter). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, those that have tuned into the 
previous presentation I think understand that there are many challenges 
facing the United States of America. There are many needs, whether it 
is health or education or welfare or more money for transportation or 
more money for national security. I think we need to pause for a moment 
sometime and ask ourselves how far and how much money should be spent 
by the Federal Government in solving an unlimited array of problems. 
National security certainly is important, and we have upped our stakes 
and upped our expenditures for national security.
  I came to Congress 12 years ago; and when I came in, I said I was 
going to serve six terms. So this is my final term in Congress. Several 
priorities I set for myself that I thought were important for the 
Federal Government to deal with, and one was balancing the budget and 
the other was trying to change Social Security so it becomes solvent, 
so it stays viable for so many of our senior Americans that need that 
money to stay out of the poverty level.

[[Page H6886]]

  I am going to talk for some minutes tonight about overspending, and 
predominantly I am going to concentrate on what I have been very 
interested in, and that is keeping the solvency of Social Security.
  The overexpenditure of Federal funds this year is now $574 billion. 
We are spending $574 billion more than what is coming in in revenues to 
the Federal Government. Some people have bragged in the last several 
weeks that the new budget analysis says that we have lowered the 
deficit spending for 2004. The fact is that we have lowered it some. 
Some use the figures $422 billion, and I want to explain, Mr. Speaker, 
why that is misleading and technically untrue. 422 billion is the money 
that we are borrowing to pay for our overspending, not including what 
we borrow from Social Security. So if we, I think, were fair with the 
Social Security Administration and the trust fund and future 
generations, then the real amount that we are overspending this year is 
$574 billion. The estimated overexpenditure for next year again is over 
$500 billion. Last year it was over $500 billion. The year before that 
it was over $500 billion.
  How do we put that money into perspective? Well, the Federal budget 
in 2004 is $2.4 trillion approximately. We are a country that is now 
228 years old. It took the first 200 years to amass a debt of $500 
billion. Now we are going deeper into debt $500 billion every year. 
What does that mean? I do not think it takes a genius economist to 
understand the implication that that has for future generations. 
Somebody is going to have to deal with that debt.
  This is a pie chart. And one of the areas on the pie chart, just 
around the 3:30 to 5 o'clock area, the purple section on the pie chart, 
is interest which represents 14 percent of total Federal spending. 
Fourteen percent of total Federal spending is what we are paying in 
interest, and this is at a time when interest rates are relatively low; 
and it does not consider how much we are going deeper and deeper into 
debt every year. So the implication of what we are paying in interest, 
roughly $300 billion a year, becomes a responsibility of our kids and 
our grandkids. If we are a family, if we are a business, we do not 
simply continue to go deeper and deeper into debt without any plans of 
ever paying it back. And the Federal Government does not have any plans 
of paying it back.
  What we found out politically is that if Members of Congress, Members 
of the House, Members of the Senate, the White House, promise more 
solutions to more of the problems that we have in this country, in this 
world, they are more apt to get reelected. So what we have been doing 
is in two areas putting a tremendous burden on our kids and our 
grandkids. One is the overspending that we just talked about. The other 
is overpromising and overpromising means that we are making promises 
that we do not have the money to pay for. And the economists with the 
green eyeshades call that unfunded liability.
  Let me just briefly go around the pie chart of expenditures. Social 
Security is the largest expenditure of the Federal Government. Some 
people say why do we put Social Security as part of a Federal 
expenditure in the budget? It is a separate program. The reason is that 
the Supreme Court on two occasions now has said that Social Security 
taxes are simply another tax, benefits are simply another benefit 
program passed by the Congress and signed by the President. So 21 
percent of the Federal budget is now spent for Social Security 
benefits, roughly $500 billion a year. Medicare is 12 percent, but it 
is growing rapidly with the addition of the prescription drug bill.
  Medicare and Medicaid will overtake Social Security within the next 
15 to 20 years. Other entitlements, 10 percent; domestic discretionary 
spending, 16 percent. We have 13 appropriation bills. We have now 
filed, by the way, the 12th appropriation bill. Hopefully we can 
complete the appropriation process before the election so the people of 
the country know what we are doing in terms of spending instead of 
coming back in a lame duck session, which I consider dangerous with the 
temptation of overspending. Twelve appropriation bills are represented 
by the 16 percent. One of the appropriation bills, defense, is 20 
percent. We spend most of the year arguing about the 16 percent of the 
Federal budget that we spend in those 12 appropriation bills.

  I want the Members to take a quick look at the overpromising that we 
mentioned. This is one of the trustees of Medicare and of Social 
Security. These are his estimates of unfunded liabilities, the amount 
that we have promised over and above the revenues coming in in a 
payroll tax, the FICA tax. The Social Security and Medicare trustees 
have calculated that we have $73.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities. 
Medicare part A, which is mostly the hospitals, 21.8 trillion; Medicare 
part B, 23.2 trillion; Medicare part D, the new drug program, $16.6 
trillion. So the prescription drug program that we recently passed adds 
$16 trillion to unfunded liabilities that somehow, some way, sometime 
our kids or our grandkids or our great grandkids are going to have to 
figure out a way to come up with those revenues to pay the interest on 
this huge amount of borrowing.
  Let me just mention what I consider another serious ramification of 
this overspending, that is, where we are getting the money. Whom do we 
borrow the money from when we overspend $574 billion this fiscal year 
2004? Seventy percent of that net increase that we need in borrowing 
comes from foreign interests. So here are foreign countries, foreign 
individuals that are lending and buying our Treasury bills because they 
figure it is a fairly good investment for the time being.
  What if some of these countries, such as China, which is amassing one 
of the largest, fastest-growing trade deficits that has extra U.S. 
dollars that is buying our Treasury bills, not to mention the equities 
in the United States that they are buying, what if they say some day, 
We think you are treating us unfairly in this trade agreement and we 
just might have to pull our money out of the United States? 
Economically it would be a disaster if this large amount of money that 
we depend on coming from foreign countries and foreign interests were 
pulled out of the United States. They are investing in the United 
States. That is a good sign. They are investing in the United States 
because they figure it is a good place to invest their money. What if 
someday, sometime that we continue to overspend to the extent that our 
economy is no longer the strongest, the best economy in the world, they 
decide to invest elsewhere?
  I am just suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that not only is overspending bad, 
but it makes us more vulnerable as these Treasury bills are bought up 
by foreign interests.
  Again, an unfunded liability is the amount of money that we would 
have to put in a bank account that is going to return, at least with 
inflation and the time value of money, to accommodate what we are going 
to owe for the next 75 years in these programs.
  The next chart shows what we have to take out of the general fund, 
out of the money that we spend for health, welfare, transportation, 
military. This is the amount of money that we are going to have to take 
out of the general fund to accommodate the entitlement programs of 
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security over the next 75 years. And as 
we see, simply 16 years from now, it is going to be 28 percent of the 
general fund budget that is going to have to be contributed to 
accommodate the needs of these entitlement programs. That is probably 
not realistic.
  So what are we going to do? We are either going to increase 
borrowing, where we have talked about the disadvantages of simply 
continuing to borrow more and more money, or we are going to have to 
dramatically increase taxes. One of these days we are going to have to 
increase taxes.
  I will not go through the whole chart, but if we do not increase 
taxes and get additional revenues from someplace else, and already 
there is a suggestion by the trustees that we could increase the 
payroll tax now by 15 percent to accommodate our needs, and the fact is 
that most working Americans now pay more in the payroll tax than they 
do in the income tax. But by 2030 without an increase in tax, we are 
going to have over 50 percent of the general fund budget that is going 
to have to be contributed to these entitlement programs.
  This is a quick birds-eye view of the Social Security problem. 
Surpluses coming in until about 2018, they diminish. The surpluses are 
coming in from

[[Page H6887]]

Social Security simply because the Greenspan Commission in 1983 
increased taxes and reduced benefits so much that there was extra 
surplus money coming in. And what of course has happened to that 
surplus is this Chamber and the Senate and the White House has spent 
all of that extra money coming in from Social Security for other 
government programs.

                              {time}  2215

  It is not there anymore. So the trustees are guessing that by 2018 
there is going to be less revenues coming in from the payroll tax than 
can accommodate the promises for Social Security. Then a huge future of 
deficits, and nobody is guessing where the money should come from.
  We are talking about a lot of things in this election, as you decide 
who your next Congressman is going to be, as you decide who your next 
President is going to be. What we are not talking enough about is what 
we are going to do about these huge challenges that are facing us in 
these programs, especially Social Security and Medicare.
  Senator Kerry has said on his Web site, and let me quote that, that 
he will not raise taxes on Social Security, he will not raise the 
retirement age, he will not cut benefits for those that rely on Social 
Security, he will not in any way privatize the program. I really do not 
know what else Senator Kerry plans to do.
  There are only a couple of ways to solve Social Security, or a 
combination. You either bring in more revenues, or you cut benefits, or 
it is a combination of both. It is not complicated. So why are people 
not talking about solutions for Social Security? Why have the 
Republicans not come up with a proposal for solving this tremendously 
important program for so many seniors? Why have the Democrats not?
  I have introduced a Social Security bill every session since I have 
been in Congress. The attacks on me for my first Social Security bills 
were, ``Do not vote to reelect Nick Smith. He is trying to ruin Social 
Security and take your Social Security away.'' Social Security 
solutions have been demagogued to the extent that most Members of 
Congress, most politicians, are afraid to come out with a proposal to 
solve Social Security.
  I was chairman of the Social Security Task Force. We held hearings 
for about a year. We ended up with both the Democrats and Republicans 
on that task force agreeing to the fact that Social Security was going 
broke, and that the longer we put off a solution to solve Social 
Security, the more drastic that solution would have to be. Of course, 
that has been my experience over the six Social Security bills that I 
have introduced that have been scored by the Social Security 
Administration to keep Social Security solvent.
  My last Social Security bill that I introduced last year is much more 
drastic. It requires additional borrowing from the general fund that we 
pay back 60 years from now simply because of, if you remember the 
chart, the surpluses coming in from Social Security are diminishing, 
and those are going to run out. Then we are going to have to come up 
somehow with the money to pay back Social Security.
  Social Security works this way: Benefits are highly progressive and 
based on earnings. That means that lower-income people, they get back 
90 percent. If you are low-income, you get back 90 percent of the wages 
you were making on the average during those working years. If you are a 
high-income person, then you get back as low as about 15 percent of the 
income you were receiving from Social Security. So that is why it is 
highly progressive. The lower-income people get back a much higher 
percentage of their working years' benefits.
  At retirement, all of a worker's wages up to the tax ceiling are 
indexed to present value using wage inflation. In other words, they do 
not average in what you were making 20 years ago or 30 years ago, they 
average in, in effect, what that job would be paying today. That is 
what they add up for your best 35 years to decide what your average 
earnings are, and therefore what your benefits are going to be.
  Here is how benefits are calculated: Ninety percent of earnings up to 
$7,344 is going to be what the low-income earner gets back; 32 percent 
of the earnings between the $7,344 and $44,000; and then 15 percent you 
get back of your earnings above $44,286. Early retirees receive 
adjusted benefits. In fact, if you delay retirement over 65, then you 
get an increase in benefits for those years that you delay benefits.
  I put this last blip in, because so many people complain about the 
abuses of the Supplemental Security Income that is administered by 
Social Security, but does not come out of the Social Security Trust 
Fund.
  When we started Social Security in 1934, Franklin Roosevelt started 
it, people during the Great Depression were going to the poorhouse. His 
idea was if there can be some forced savings during your working years, 
you will have a program that gives you more social security in your 
retirement years. So in 1934, we started the Social Security program.
  It was created not to be the sole income of retirees, but to be one 
of a three-legged stool. As I visited the Archives, in fact, they have 
the brochures back in those years of the three-legged stool; one being 
your pension benefits from work, one being what you save yourself, and 
the other Social Security programs. But now more and more people are 
depending on Social Security as their main source of retirement income.

  Social Security was supposed to be one of the legs of the three-
legged stool to support retirees. It was supposed to go hand-in-hand 
with personal savings and private pension plans.
  Let me tell you something interesting in terms of the debate and 
arguments between the House and the Senate when we formed Social 
Security. The Senate actually passed a bill that it would be privately 
owned bank accounts by the individual workers, but that they could not 
take out that money until they retired. But it would be their money, 
and if they died before age 65, then it would be passed on to their 
heirs.
  The House, on the other hand, passed legislation that said the 
government should take in all of this money, control it, and then 
promise a fixed benefit at retirement. So if a person died before age 
65, they would not get anything.
  It worked very well in those early years. But the compromise between 
the House and the Senate, with some of the concerns about the 
investments of the great stock market crash of the late 1920s and early 
1930s, the compromise was that we have the Social Security plan that we 
have today, which means that government takes in all of the money, and 
if there is any extra, government spends it on something else and still 
continues to promise benefits.
  What we have done, because it is politically popular, we have 
expanded the Social Security benefit program to include spouses and 
then to include early retirement. In 1965, we amended the Social 
Security Act to start the Medicare program that now is going to 
overtake the base Social Security program as a cost item.
  The fact is that Social Security is a system stretched to its limits. 
Seventy-eight million baby-boomers begin retiring in 2008, Social 
Security spending exceeds tax revenues in 2017, and Social Security 
Trust Funds go broke in 2037.
  The Social Security Trust Funds, however, there is going to be less 
money coming in from Social Security than we need to pay in benefits 
starting in 2017 and 2018, so where is the government going to come up 
with that money? I suspect the easy way will be borrowing more money. 
Of course, that means enticing more foreign investors to invest in our 
Treasury bills.
  We are going to pay it back, but the fact is the $1.4 trillion the 
government now owes in Social Security does not accommodate the $12 
trillion unfunded liability for Social Security. Again, let me repeat 
that we would have to put around $11.8 trillion in a savings account 
today drawing the interest that would reflect inflation and the time 
value of money to accommodate what is going to be needed over the next 
75 years to keep our Social Security promises.
  We know how many people there are and when they will retire. This is 
what the Social Security trustees do. We know that people will live 
longer in retirement. We know how much they will pay in and how much 
they will take out. Payroll taxes will not cover benefits starting in 
2017, and the shortfalls

[[Page H6888]]

will add up to $120 trillion between 2017 and 2075.
  This is all sort of downer news. But the good news, Mr. Speaker, is 
more and more people are aware that Social Security is a huge problem. 
We are talking about it a little bit in some of the campaigns.
  Alan Greenspan, Chairman Alan Greenspan on several occasions now has 
said, look, do not put it off any longer. You have got to do something 
to keep Social Security solvent. It is not fair to future retirees to 
simply let them go on thinking that they are going to receive these 
benefits, and then the money is not going to be there when they retire. 
So, hooray for Alan Greenspan.
  But when Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed, said that in 
committee, both Republicans and Democrats jumped on him, saying, look, 
no way. We are going to protect our seniors. We are not going to reduce 
benefits, and we are not going to increase taxes.
  Well, you cannot do it that way.
  This is a quick picture of the demographic problems we are running 
into. People are living longer, and the birth rate is going down. 
Therefore, when you have a program that is pay-as-you-go, that depends 
on current workers to pay in their payroll tax that within 5 days goes 
out to pay benefits, if you do not have a growing working population, 
then you are in trouble. That is the problem with Social Security.
  In 1940, we had 28 people working, dividing between them what is 
needed for each retiree. In the year 2000, it went down to three people 
working, dividing between those three one person's Social Security 
benefits. By 2025, in the United States there is going to be two people 
working paying in benefits for Social Security.
  Here is the danger. Here is what I tell the business community, the 
National Association of Manufacturers, in encouraging them to be more 
aggressive in supporting Social Security reform: That if we do nothing, 
the danger is increasing the payroll tax. And what does that mean? That 
means we become less competitive in this country.
  Look at France. Guess what the payroll tax is in France to 
accommodate their senior retired population? It is over 50 percent. So 
no wonder France is complaining and demonstrating and striking to try 
to get better returns on their wages, and no wonder their economy is 
tremendously challenged.
  Germany just went over 40 percent of their payroll tax to accommodate 
their senior population. If we do not do anything and we simply keep 
putting off the problem, then we are destined to have the kind of tax 
increase that is going to make us less competitive in a world economy 
that is challenging us more and more every year, and that is a huge 
challenge.
  I chair the Subcommittee on Research of the Committee on Science, and 
what we are looking at is a lot of our talent is moving overseas. As we 
become more and more restrictive on homeland security, for example, it 
means that it is tougher and tougher for foreign students to get into 
our universities to do their graduate work in math or physics or 
chemistry, in the sciences. That is what we have depended on. Half of 
our research in the United States that is government-funded, that is, 
most all of our basic research, has been done by foreign students. The 
other part of that problem is that our seniors in high school have 
scored very low on international tests in science and math.
  So our challenges are huge, to do a better job in education; to do a 
better job in our homes, with parents encouraging their students; to do 
a better job to encourage more students to achieve in science and math 
if we are going to start holding some of these foreign students out of 
our country.
  Some people have suggested, in fact I wrote a letter to the editor of 
the Wall Street Journal when there was an op-ed saying if our economy 
grows, that is going to fix Social Security. Here is why that is not 
true. Social Security benefits are indexed to wage growth.

                              {time}  2230

  In other words, if the economy grows and more people are working and 
wages go up, that means that your benefits are going to also go up 
eventually. When the economy grows, workers pay in more in taxes, but 
also will earn more in benefits when they retire. Growth makes the 
numbers look better now, but leaves the larger hole to fill later. The 
administration has used these short-term advantages for the last 16 
years to say, well, maybe the economy will work us out of this problem.
  I have incorporated in the bill that I introduced last year, I have 
incorporated some of President Clinton's ideas on how to deal with the 
Social Security problem. I have incorporated some of President Bush's 
ideas, and it has now been scored by the Social Security Administration 
that it will keep Social Security solvent. A lot of people, and I have 
given maybe 200 speeches around my district and the United States on 
Social Security, a lot of people say, well, if Congress would keep 
their hands off the surplus coming in from Social Security, everything 
would be okay. I wanted to show this chart to show what is needed 
versus what the trust fund is.
  The trust fund now, with interest that has accrued every year, is 
$1.4 trillion. What is needed for the unfunded liability for Social 
Security is $12.2 trillion. So we are going to pay the trust fund back, 
but it is not even going to come close to accommodating the need of up 
until 2075, what is needed in Social Security. Shortfalls will add up 
to $120 trillion in future dollars, but that means right now the 
unfunded liability, $12 trillion, would have to go into a savings 
account, returning at least interest that accommodates inflation.
  Social Security as a total unfunded liability of $12 trillion. The 
Social Security trust fund contains nothing but IOUs. To keep paying 
promised Social Security benefits, the payroll tax will have to be 
increased by nearly 50 percent, or benefits will have to be cut by 30 
percent.
  Hang on, everybody. Hang on, Mr. Speaker. This is tough going. This 
is sort of a 35-minute tutorial on Social Security, and if everybody 
knows everything on these charts, they probably know more than most 
Members of the House and the Senate and many of the economists. But 
what is satisfying is that more and more people are talking about it. 
And I think it is good to ask the Members of Congress and the 
candidates for President what their plan is for saving Social Security 
and Medicare.
  But on the other hand, a campaign year is probably not a good time to 
force a solution, simply because it is so easy to scare half of the 
retirees in this country that depend so much on Social Security. So you 
can understand how they can be swayed in their vote of who they vote 
for, and just the suggestion that the opposing candidate is going to 
take away their Social Security benefits. So I think our best chance is 
in the first year of a 4-year term of the President. So I am hoping, 
whether it is Kerry or Bush, that they will not dig a hole so tight 
that it limits real solutions to keep this program solvent for a long 
time, hopefully forever.
  Social Security is not a good investment. That is what this chart 
shows. The real return of Social Security is less than 2 percent, and 
that compares to over 7 percent for the market, on average. So if you 
invested in equities and keep them at least 12 years, your average 
return is 7 percent.
  This shows that minorities get less, a negative return from their 
investment in Social Security. That is because the average return, the 
average life span of a black male is 62 years old, and it is 
interesting that that was the average life span when we started Social 
Security. Up until about 1940, the average age of death was about 62; 
but even from the very beginning, the benefit entitlement did not start 
until age 65. So you can see Social Security worked very well in those 
early years, because most people did not live long enough to start 
collecting benefits.
  The average return that the average Social Security recipient gets is 
just under 2 percent. This is what the market pays on average, 7 
percent. However, the Wilshire 5,000 actually earned 11.86 percent, and 
that was over and above inflation, over the decade that ended January 
31, 2004. So even in the slump years of equities, these 5,000 stocks of 
the Wilshire average still was over, almost 12 percent return on 
investment. Again, that compares to an average of 7 percent for the 
average retiree, for the money they pay in in Social Security.

[[Page H6889]]

  This is how long you have to live after retirement to break even on 
the money that you and your employer sent in on Social Security. In 
2005, you have to live 23 years after you retire; and as you see, it 
goes up to 26 years after 2015. That is because we keep increasing the 
amount that you pay in.
  Here is the danger. Here is maybe the most important chart I think of 
why we need to do something with Social Security. And that is 
historically, every time we have had a problem with less money coming 
in than what we need to pay benefits, we have increased taxes and 
reduced benefits. Here is the history of tax increases. In 1940, it 
went up to 2 percent from the 1 percent, to $3,000. In 1960 we ran a 
little short of money, so we tripled the tax rate up to 6 percent, and 
we increased the base to $4,800. In 1980, we increased the tax rate to 
10.16 percent, and increased the base to $25,900. In the year 2000, we 
increased the tax rate to 12.4 percent of the first $26,700. In 2004, 
we did not increase the tax; but the base has gone up to, it is now 
$89,000 base that you pay Social Security taxes on. I think I mentioned 
most all working Americans, 78 percent of families pay more in the 
payroll tax than they do the income tax.
  So to increase taxes I think is a bad idea; it is a wrong idea. It is 
bad for the economy. Let us encourage the kind of changes in Social 
Security that are going to tend to help the economy by helping more 
money in investing.
  I am going to briefly run through my Social Security bill. It is 
scored by the Social Security Administration actuaries to restore the 
long-term solvency of Social Security. There is no increase in the 
retirement age, no changes in the COLA, the cost of living annual 
payments, or, there is no changes in the benefits for any senior or 
near-term seniors. Solvency is achieved through higher returns from 
worker accounts and slowing the increase in benefits for the highest 
earning retirees.
  So what I do is I add another ben point. Remember earlier when we 
talked about the high income gets 15 percent of their wages. I add 
another ben point that is 5 percent that results in slowing down the 
increase in benefits for high-income retirees. I mean, somehow it is 
going to take money. That is one of the benefits.
  The Social Security trust fund continues. Voluntary accounts would 
start at 2.5 percent of income and would increase to 8 percent of 
income by 2075. And the personally owned worker savings account is 
voluntary, number one. And number two, we guarantee that they are going 
to have as much return and revenue and retirement benefits from that 
personally owned retirement account as they would from the traditional 
Social Security. So with that guarantee, we assume that everybody under 
50 years old at least is going to have that kind of personally owned 
account where they own the money. If something happens to them before 
they reach retirement age, it is going to be passed on to their heirs 
instead of the Federal Government. Investments would be safe, widely 
diversified, and investment providers would be subject to government 
oversight. The government would supplement the account of workers 
earning less than $35,000 to ensure that they build up significant 
savings.

  This is one of President Clinton's ideas. I think it was the USA 
account he called it, as I recall. It simply says, for those lower-
income workers, so that they can experience the magic of compound 
interest, we will add a little bit to their personally owned savings 
account so that even modest workers can retire as much wealthier 
retirees.
  All worker accounts would be owned by the worker and invested through 
pools supervised by the government, something like the Thrift Savings 
Plan that all Federal employees have now. Regulations would be 
instituted to prevent people from taking undue risk, and workers would 
have a choice of three safe index funds with more options after their 
balance reaches $2,500. And even then, it has to be an investment 
determined by the Secretary of the Treasury that is a safe investment.
  And for my last three charts, accounts are voluntary and participants 
would receive benefits directly from the government, along with their 
accounts. Government benefits would be offset based on the money 
deposited into their accounts, not on the money earned; and workers 
could expect to earn more from their account than from traditional 
Social Security.
  These are some things that have concerned me a little bit in terms of 
fairness. To be politically correct, maybe I should say fairness to 
spouses; but, in truth, it is fairness to women. So these are some 
provisions that I have included in the bill. For married couples, 
account contributions would be pooled and then divided equally between 
husband and wife. In other words, everything that the husband is 
allowed to invest in his private account would be added to the amount 
that the wife is allowed to invest in her private account. They would 
be added together and divided by two, so both the husband and the wife 
would have identical investments in their personally owned account. It 
would increase surviving spouse benefits to 110 percent of the higher 
earning spouse's benefit.
  Right now, if the husband dies, the wife is entitled to 100 percent 
of the husband's benefit, and then she loses whatever benefit she was 
getting.
  It is important that we look at ways to keep more and more people in 
their own homes, rather than going to nursing homes and going on 
Medicaid. So increasing this benefit 110 percent is estimated to keep a 
lot more people in their own homes rather than going to nursing homes. 
And the last change is stay-at-home mothers with kids under 5 would 
receive retirement credit in the way their Social Security benefits are 
calculated.
  Here is some additional provisions in the bill, just briefly. 
Increased contribution limits for IRAs and 401(k)s and pension plans to 
increase more personal efforts at savings. A 33 percent tax credit for 
purchase of long-term care insurance up to $1,000, $2,000 per couple 
per year. Low-income seniors would be eligible for a $1,000 tax credit 
for expenses related to living in their own home, and households caring 
for dependent parents would also be eligible for a $1,000 credit for 
expenses.
  Back to the beginning of my presentation. We are faced with a lot of 
challenges, a lot of problems. And what we have to face up to is how 
many problems should the Federal Government, through increased taxes or 
increased borrowing, solve. And somehow, people that go to the ballot 
box and elect Members of Congress and elect their President are going 
to have to make eventually that decision: How much do we want to go in 
debt in this country? How vulnerable do we want to be to the foreign 
investments that are now buying up more and more of our equities and 
our Treasury bills?
  So I just plead with, Mr. Speaker, through you to all America, as we 
go through this election year in November, consider some of the 
ramifications of the huge challenges, in addition to national security. 
How much should we be spending in addition to the programs that we just 
debated earlier this evening that we are going to be voting on 
tomorrow, a program that it is hard to object to, but it is a new $80 
million program that sets up a Federal Government fund in schools to 
try to reduce suicide rates.

                              {time}  2245

  To me, I am still debating how to vote on that bill because I am 
concerned about that increased borrowing and expanding government 
programs at a time when we are going so deep in debt and when the 
interest on that debt is eating up a larger and larger share of our 
Federal budget.

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