[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 9, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H495-H496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NO CRISIS IN SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise to help dispel the 
ridiculous myth that Social Security is in a state of crisis.
  If you listened to the President at the State of the Union or out on 
the stump, you have heard the President use words like ``broke,'' 
``bust'' or ``bankrupt.'' Mr. Speaker, Social Security is neither broke 
nor bankrupt. The program is certainly not in crisis. A crisis is an 
imminent problem. Yet, while the President cries ``crisis,'' Social 
Security continues to bring in more than it pays out in benefits.
  According to the Social Security trustees, the program will continue 
to do so for the next 13 years, until 2018, when the trust fund will be 
tapped to help pay for benefits. Even then the cries of ``crisis'' 
would be melodramatic because the money accumulated in the trust fund 
would be able to provide full benefits for the next quarter of a 
century.
  As a recent Washington Post article put it, calling 2018 a crisis 
point is ``like saying that Bill Gates will be strapped if he works 
only part-time.'' Just as Bill Gates has his personal trust fund to 
draw down, the Social Security trust fund will have more than $3.7 
trillion in it in 2018. If our government is going to pay back the 
debts we owe to someone in a foreign country that invests in Treasury 
notes, why

[[Page H496]]

should we not be required to pay back the Social Security trust fund, 
whether it is 2018, 2025 or tomorrow?
  The trustees acknowledge that the trust fund and incoming payroll 
taxes will be enough to cover full benefits until 2042, so there will 
be no reduction of benefits if Congress did nothing this year and until 
2042. According to our own Congressional Budget Office, it would last 
until 2052. Frankly, the CBO, the budget office, has been much more 
accurate than the Social Security Trustees' report.
  Even if the Social Security trust fund is spent, the program still 
will not be in crisis. After 2052, according to CBO, the Trustees 
project that the program will be able to pay out at least 70 percent of 
the benefits.

                              {time}  1815

  Again, that is 47 years from now. Make no mistake, I will not support 
a cut in benefits, and so a fix is certainly in order, but we need a 
solution that will mend Social Security without ending the program as 
we know it. Privatization is no solution.
  While we know very little about the details of the President's plan, 
this much is for sure. On its own, privatization does nothing to close 
Social Security's funding gap. Rather, it increases that gap by $1.4 
trillion in the first 10 years of private accounts and by another $3.5 
trillion in the next decade. Not only is Social Security further 
burdened by private accounts but our seniors would also be worse off.
  Mr. Speaker, Social Security faces a challenge, not a crisis. Small 
changes based on the right priorities could keep the program floating 
comfortably in a sea of black ink for generations to come.
  A repeal of the President's tax cuts on 1 percent of the wealthiest 
will bring in enough revenue to take care of 80 percent of Social 
Security's shortfall for the next 75 years. And I will repeat: if we 
repeal 1 percent of the tax cuts for the highest percentage of the 
wealthiest in our country, it would take care of 80 percent of Social 
Security's shortfall over the next 75 years. Yet somehow I doubt 
whether the administration will ever prioritize a safety net program 
benefiting all Americans over a tax cut that benefits the wealthy few.
  As we consider the various Social Security proposals during this 
debate, we must remember that Social Security was created as a safety 
net to provide a minimum standard of living for America's retirees. 
Nobody is supposed to get rich off Social Security, and they do not. 
Frankly, with private accounts, I do not think they will get rich 
either.
  What they will do, however, is take the security out of Social 
Security and jeopardize the program's mission and effectiveness.
  For the sake of all the future Social Security beneficiaries, I urge 
the President to separate the rhetoric from the reality and quit 
fabricating a crisis in a vain attempt to privatize the most popular, 
most successful domestic program in our Nation's history.

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