[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 4 (Monday, January 24, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S114-S116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S114]]
                     SCHEDULE OF THE 109TH CONGRESS

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this is a critical day in the schedule 
calendar of the Senate. For those who follow the ebb and flow of 
business in the Senate, this is the kickoff, the tip-off, the first 
pitch. This is the week when we start rolling up our sleeves to get 
down to business.
  Traditionally, the leaders on both sides, Republican and Democrat, 
announce their priorities, what they would like to see as the 
legislative accomplishments of this session. I am certain the list 
announced today by Senator Frist and Senator Reid are not exhaustive. 
There are many issues that were not included on either list that will 
certainly be discussed.
  However, I think it is interesting what we find when we compare the 
two lists. On the Republican side, the No. 1 priority, the highest 
legislative priority from Senator Frist, is what is termed the Social 
Security Solvency and Protection Act.
  On the Democratic side, we have a different approach. Our first 
priority is the title of ``putting America's security first, standing 
with our troops.''
  Both of these legislative proposals address important issues. No one 
argues that the Social Security system should not be carefully watched 
and that we should not address the law and change it from time to time. 
However, it is interesting that both President Bush and the Republican 
leaders in the Senate have decided the highest priority for this 
session is Social Security.
  The reason why I find it interesting is that they prefaced this 
decision by saying we are facing a crisis in Social Security. Some use 
those terms. The President himself has called it a problem. Some have 
called it a challenge. But whatever your characterization, it is clear 
that the White House believes this is the issue that should come first 
of all issues that Congress might consider.
  If we did nothing to Social Security, if we made no change whatsoever 
in the law--didn't change a comma, a semicolon, put a period at the end 
of the sentence, nothing in the law--Social Security would continue to 
pay out to over 47 million Americans every payment with a cost of 
living adjustment for 37 years from today. There is not another program 
in the Government that you can say the same thing about. There is no 
other program that you can say with any certainty is funded to be in 
existence 37 years from today.
  Most other programs depend on the Appropriations Committee and the 
will of Congress and the leadership of the President for funding. 
Social Security, left untouched, is on track for 37 years of solvency. 
Why? Because in the early 1980s, leaders in Congress took a look at the 
Social Security system and said: We have a problem. The problem is, 
returning GIs from World War II, anxious to start their families, had a 
lot of babies in a hurry, the so-called baby boom generation. Those 
kids, first born after 1945, will reach retirement age and start 
showing up and asking for their Social Security checks. By our 
projection, we will not have enough money.
  So in the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan, a leading Republican, 
came up to Capitol Hill, met with the House Democratic Speaker, ``Tip'' 
O'Neill, the leading Democrat of the day, and said: Can we come 
together and agree on a plan that will make sure Social Security is 
going to be able to handle the baby boomers. They sat down and went 
into a lengthy negotiation, a commission, debate, a study, and came up 
with a proposal. The net result of that proposal was to change the 
Social Security law in the early 1980s to make certain that Social 
Security would have a bright future.
  In 1983, we passed this law which bought 53 years of solvency for the 
Social Security system. So we can say for more than half a century 
Social Security will be running in the black and not in the red.
  What changes did we make? Some involve benefits, some taxes. Some 
were controversial; some were not.
  When it is all said and done, we did the right thing. We took a 
program that was about 50 years old and gave it over 50 more years of 
life by reaching a bipartisan decision that would give to Social 
Security that bright future. That is what happened in the mid-1980s.
  Now comes the President and his Republican friends in Congress 
saying: Stop; we have a crisis on our hands in Social Security. If we 
do not do something, and do it today, if we do not make dramatic 
changes in Social Security, it will not be there to pay the workers of 
tomorrow.
  That overlooks the obvious. The Social Security Board takes a close 
look at the system and they tell us what we did in the mid-1980s still 
works today. We have at least 37 more years of solvency in Social 
Security. So there is no immediate crisis.
  Is there a challenge? Yes, because in 2042, we have to change the law 
so that it brings in more money or in some way is handled in a 
different fashion so more people are covered. So 37 years from now, we 
have a challenge.
  Can we do things today to address that challenge? You bet we can. We 
can make modest and commonsense changes in Social Security that will 
give it 20, 30 more years of life. That is a responsible thing to do.
  Listen to what the White House is proposing that we do with Social 
Security. It is not a question of a modest commonsense change. It is a 
dramatic and some would say radical change in Social Security. What the 
White House is proposing is that we partially privatize Social 
Security. In other words, the workers who are paying into Social 
Security, instead of paying 6.2 percent of their earnings, would pay 
less--perhaps 4 percent of their earnings and then take the other 2 
percent and put it into privatized accounts--into the stock market, 
mutual funds, something of that nature. The argument from the 
President's supporters is that this would mean they have ownership of 
their future because they are investing their own money.

  There are several things on which the President has not given the 
details. By most calculations, taking money out of Social Security for 
privatization, partial or otherwise, means cutting the benefits of 
Social Security retirees. How can you take the money out of the system 
that we planned on using to pay retirees for the next 37 years without 
cutting those benefits? And, if you do not cut the benefits, how do you 
make up the difference? Some estimate the privatization of Social 
Security will cost us $2 trillion in the first 10 years.
  Questions have been asked. I was at a meeting where questions were 
asked of the President: How will we pay for the $2 trillion? The 
argument is, we will add it to the national debt, the largest increase 
in the national debt in the history of the United States to privatize 
Social Security. Is that what we are bargaining for?
  A lot of people have said if you increase the national debt, it means 
the United States has to borrow more money. Where do we borrow money? 
We borrow money from Japan and China and Korea, countries that not only 
lend us money for our debt but then expect us to buy more of their 
products in return.
  So when you look at the imports coming into the United States from 
all over the world, they are coming in largely from countries that are 
buying our debt. So $2 trillion more in debt for future generations, $2 
trillion more in foreign products coming into the United States. Lord 
only knows what it means to the future of our economy and jobs going 
out of the United States.
  As you can see, this is a complicated issue and it is an issue that 
will be the subject of a long debate.
  This is what I think. If privatizing Social Security means cutting 
benefits for the retirees in the future, if it means adding $2 trillion 
to the national debt to be paid for by future generations, it is not a 
good bargain. But it is the No. 1 priority of the Republicans in the 
Senate.
  In fairness to the Republican leadership and to the President, we 
want to see the proposal. We want to see what the President is actually 
asking for. There have been a lot of press conferences. The President 
has ads on television now. He has been visiting different cities 
talking about privatization of Social Security. But we need to see the 
law.

  What we think, though, is if you want a real crisis in America you 
can find it, a crisis that deserves our immediate attention. Allow me 
to start with

[[Page S115]]

health care. In the last few years--in fact, in the last 4 years--we 
have seen a dramatic increase in the number of uninsured Americans. 
Since President Bush took office, we have increased the number of 
uninsured Americans, those without health insurance, from 40 to 45 
million. And the cost of health care has skyrocketed in America.
  What is being done by this administration, by this Congress, to deal 
with the skyrocketing cost of health care? Virtually nothing. Why? 
Because in order to tackle this issue, you have to acknowledge the 
obvious. The market forces are at work, and the market forces are 
killing us.
  The cost of health insurance continues to go up every year; the 
coverage goes down. Fewer and fewer people can afford it. Businesses 
are seeing these costs skyrocket, and they cannot be profitable because 
of these costs or they have to cut off health insurance. That is the 
reality.
  The business leaders I speak to in Illinois, large and small, all 
tell me the cost of health insurance is the No. 1 crisis they are 
facing. Why isn't that on the list of the Republican leadership, to 
deal with the cost of health insurance and this health care crisis?
  We believe on the Democratic side, and have a legislative proposal, 
to give tax credits to small businesses that do the right thing, that 
protect their employees with health insurance. That, to me, is a good 
tax reform. It accomplishes exactly what we want. It strengthens small 
business, the No. 1 generator of jobs in America, and helps them when 
they do the right and responsible thing by covering their employees. 
There are a lot of tax cuts people are talking about. You have heard a 
lot of talk on this floor about them. But this is one that makes 
eminent sense.
  We also need to do something with the related issue of the cost of 
prescription drugs. A lot of people, including the Governor of my 
State, have proposed that we import drugs from Canada. Why in the world 
would this great country of ours be dependent on a smaller country, an 
important but smaller country, Canada, for our prescription drugs?
  It is because, frankly, we are not importing prescription drugs from 
Canada. We are importing political leadership.
  The Canadian Government had the political will and courage to stand 
up to American drug companies and tell them they could not continue to 
dramatically increase the cost of drugs for sale to Canadians every 
single year. The American drug companies said: All right, then we 
won't. But this Government and this Congress will not stand up to those 
same drug companies. As a result, costs skyrocket in America, and they 
are half that cost in Canada.
  We believe until this Government and this administration have the 
political will to represent the American consumers and bring prices 
down, we have no choice but to turn to Canada and other sources of 
reimported, safe American drugs. We support that.
  We also believe we need to monitor drugs more carefully. How many 
times have we heard the news in the last several weeks about the Food 
and Drug Administration discovering that a drug that had been for sale 
in the United States for a long period of time is unsafe, taken from 
the market? You have heard it, as I have, time and again. We make 
certain that drug approvals in this country are going to be handled in 
a way that will give consumers confidence in what they are buying.
  The second issue is the one of education. Many of us voted for No 
Child Left Behind, the President's premier education program, expecting 
that once we identified the problems in American schools, we would 
provide the resources to deal with them. It did not happen. President 
Bush and the leadership in Congress refused to fund, to the authorized 
amount, No Child Left Behind, which meant that schools that were 
falling behind did not have money for smaller class sizes, for 
afterschool programs, summer programs, and tutoring. As a result, 
having identified the problems, we walked away from them.

  We believe on the Democratic side that funding education across 
America is our highest priority. I just heard the Senator from Maine 
talk about Pell grants. I could not agree with her more. Pell grants 
are the way a lot of kids have a chance to get a college education. You 
know the story. Kids work hard in school. They graduate from college 
with $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 or 
$80,000 of debt, and these kids turn to the marketplace and say: I have 
to take the best paying job, if I can find one.
  Pell grants mean students do not have to borrow as much money. The 
new rules from the Bush administration, just released, means fewer Pell 
grants will be available. In Illinois, 48,000 students will see their 
Pell grants cut because of the Bush administration proposals. And 1,450 
will lose them entirely. That is not the way to encourage young people 
to pursue the education of their dreams, to prepare themselves for the 
21st century.
  We also believe, and Senator Schumer has been a leader on this issue, 
that families ought to have the tax deductibility of college education 
expenses. You can deduct the interest on your mortgage. Why? Because we 
want to encourage home ownership. Why wouldn't we say to families, you 
can deduct college education expenses so as to encourage your son or 
daughter to achieve their dreams with higher education? That is another 
type of tax reform which I think is very positive.
  When it comes to economic opportunity, we believe we need to have a 
Federal minimum wage increase. The majority of workers on minimum wage 
are women, and the majority of those are women raising small families 
in a household that may or may not have a husband present. They are 
making great sacrifices, sometimes holding down two jobs. And for over 
7 years, this administration has resisted, first in Congress, now in 
the Presidency, increasing the minimum wage. Try to live on the minimum 
wage as you know it today. It is virtually impossible. We think work 
deserves our dignified respect and deserves a dignified wage. We favor 
increasing the minimum wage.
  We also want to deal with the exporting of American jobs overseas. 
Lou Dobbs talks about this all the time. You know what is happening. 
Good-paying manufacturing jobs are leaving America. Why are they going 
overseas? Well, sadly, our Tax Code rewards companies that send jobs 
overseas. That is wrong.
  Secondly, we are not calling in the trade police on the countries 
that are violating trade practices and trade treaties. So when China 
manipulates its currency so it puts American businesses out of business 
and workers on the street, we do not hold them accountable.
  The Democrats believe that should be a legislative priority. If we 
are going to have good jobs for our workers and those coming out of 
college, we have to stand up and fight for the jobs that are leaving 
America. That is a critical element.
  Let me add to that list. I said at a press conference today, and I 
believe it, the political tsunami that is about to hit us in the United 
States relates to pensions and health care for retirees. Think about 
how many people in America worked a lifetime believing if they paid out 
of every paycheck a certain amount of money, that when they retired 
they would have a private pension plan taking care of them--thousands 
and thousands of Americans.
  What is happening today? Those companies are going bankrupt. Those 
companies are in a position where they are trying to restructure and 
walk away from their pension requirements, walk away from health care 
retirements. The system we have set up in this country is not adequate 
to the task. So if we want to make certain these Americans have the 
retirement they planned on, we need real leadership here in Congress.

  The last issue I will mention today has to do with reforming voting 
in America. I think the last election was better than the one before, 
not in the outcome--I saw that differently--but in the way it was 
handled. Yet in the State of Ohio, in my State of Illinois, in States 
around the Nation, voters walked to the polling place and many of them 
ran into obstacles they should not run into. We ought to make voting 
easier in America.
  When an American citizen does the right thing and goes out to vote, 
we ought to say they are going to have a consistent law, a consistent 
standard applied to them, whether they live in Ohio, Illinois, Florida, 
Nevada, or the

[[Page S116]]

State of Washington. I think that is something we can do and should do.
  Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Six minutes.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, I would like to close on this note: There is a lot 
of discussion here, starting with the President's inaugural, about the 
whole concept of an ownership society. I think this is going to be the 
driving philosophy and the driving political force behind the 
Republican agenda. The concept is alluring because the concept says: 
Wouldn't you want to control your own future? Wouldn't you like to own 
your future as opposed to depending on the Government? You cannot be 
certain that Congress and the Government will come through for you. So 
wouldn't you rather own your own future?
  Boy, that has a lot of appeal, particularly to young people who feel 
invincible, that just given a chance: Let me take the money, let me 
invest for my future, let me make these decisions. That is not a bad 
quality. It is an independence that we encourage in individuals, and it 
is certainly one that I support. But we should not overlook the 
obvious.
  At the heart of the ownership society is the basic belief that we 
should just remember that when it comes to America, we are all in this 
alone. I do not think that is true. I think history tells us that 
standing alone there are some things we can do but other things we 
cannot do.
  If you want to be successful in America, you need good health. Can 
you control your own fate when it comes to health care? Only if the 
system treats you fairly. If you happen to be somebody with a 
preexisting condition and no insurance company will offer you coverage, 
you are not likely to be treated fairly. If you happen to be one who 
comes from a family with some history of mental illness, you will find 
rank discrimination by hospitalization insurance companies right now.
  The point I am making is this: We have decided that to make certain 
people have a chance in America to succeed when it comes to health 
care, there will be rules of the game, there will be laws in States, 
and laws in the Federal Government and agencies to enforce them. 
Ownership? Yes. To have ownership of your future, you need good health 
care. To have good health care, you need to have a government standing 
behind you and protecting your right to fair treatment when it comes to 
health care.
  How about education? Do you want to go it alone with the ownership 
society? Well, you may need a Pell grant to get through school. I 
borrowed money from the National Defense Education Act to get through 
college and law school. Students find, over and over again, were it not 
for Government programs, they might not be able to go to school. You 
want to own your future? Then you need to have leadership at the 
Federal, State, and local level to give you the chance to borrow the 
money.
  What about your pension that you spend a lifetime paying into, 
believing you own that? That is not Government. I own that. And then 
the company disappears or walks away from its obligation to you. What 
fighting chance do you have? None, unless there is a law that protects 
you and an agency that will enforce that law.
  So when you hear this alluring prospect of an ownership society, 
understand we value individual freedom on both sides of the aisle, but 
we also understand that in many instances the strength of our Nation is 
when we stand together--for fairness when it comes to health care, for 
opportunity when it comes to education, to have protection when it 
comes to your pension and your future.
  We need a balance. Walking away from Government, as an evil entity, 
is ignoring the fact that Government, in many instances, is just the 
American family at large. As my wife and I care for our children, we 
care for others in this country and those who are shortchanged by this 
system and who are not protected. Even if it does not affect me 
directly and personally, it affects this country, and it affects my 
future.
  So I hope we can find some balance. I hope, when it is all said and 
done, we do not get so caught up in this alluring notion of the 
ownership society that we forget, as we are learning with our military, 
we have learned in our history, there are times when we need to stand 
together as a nation for fairness and for justice. We say here is 
security, opportunity, and making certain people have responsibility in 
their actions.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, our time is almost up.
  I am delighted to have heard the comments of the Senator from 
Illinois. I remember so well when we faced the problem of dealing with 
Federal employees back in the 1980s. We determined that a thrift plan 
was necessary. We encouraged members of the Federal employee workforce 
to set aside a portion of their income. For every $2 they set aside, 
the Federal Government agreed to match it with $1.
  I think this thrift plan has proved to be a decisive factor in 
maintaining the employment of key employees because it gave them a 
chance to reach out and be part of the general economy, to invest in 
the issues that were covered by the thrift plan management group. I do 
believe it has been a successful venture.
  I hope the exploration we make of the President's suggestion leads to 
a similar type of circumstance, to a similar development of the 
opportunity for everyone covered by Social Security to similarly 
participate in funds that are part of the general stock market, part of 
the general investments of the United States. So many investors now in 
our country participate in that way.

                          ____________________