[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 9, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H506-H512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
30-SOMETHING DEMOCRATS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to come
before the House and also the American people in this great democracy
of ours to address issues that are facing our Nation right now.
I must say that earlier today we had an opportunity, the Democratic
Caucus meeting and afterwards, having comments with not only the media,
but other members of our caucus about the needs of Social Security.
It is important that we make sure that Social Security is secured for
years to come. We know that a number of Americans count on and look
forward to Social Security being a part of their lives not only in
retirement, but also in their everyday lives. We have 48 million
Americans that are involved in Social Security right now, and they are
not all retired. Many of them are in school. Many of them are middle-
aged individuals.
Tonight we are going to have a number of Members from the 30-
Something Working Group, which I must add, Mr. Speaker, started in the
last Congress, in the 108th Congress. I cochair that working group with
the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), and we are going to have a number
of Members who are very, very concerned about the principles that not
only the President but the majority side have put together as the way
to save Social Security.
I will be sharing a few of my comments along the way, but I want to
make sure that my colleagues have enough time to share their concerns
about what is happening, and the lack thereof that should happen, to
make sure that Social Security is not only here for those that are
enrolled now, but those that will be enrolled in the future.
We know that every American participates in the Social Security
program. We also know the average benefit of the person receiving
Social Security now is $955 a month. I think it is important that we
pay very close attention.
Now, here in this Chamber last week, and I would say, around this
time, the President came into a joint session of the Congress on the
State of the Union and said that Americans over the age of 55 do not
have to worry about the changes that he would like to make to the
Social Security plan.
I must say that that brought amounts of concern throughout the
country not only with me and Members of Congress on both sides of the
aisle, but many Americans. It was almost saying that if you are 55, do
not worry about it; if you are under 55, trust us. And I can tell you
that when we start dealing with generational Social Security, or one
generation against the other, I think that is very dangerous. Social
Security was never designed to deal with one segment of the population,
giving them certain benefits, and another segment, not giving them
benefits.
But I just want to mention a few guiding principles that we should
think about here tonight. Number one, we should try to make sure that
we have a Social Security plan, that we are not borrowing from the
Social Security trust fund. The Social Security trust fund is there to
make sure that when we have a rainy day, or when we have a shortfall,
we are able to go to that trust fund.
What the President and the majority side are proposing now, they are
saying that we are going to help save Social Security, but at the same
time we are going to take us $2 trillion more into debt over the next
10 years. There has to be a better way to make sure that we deal with
the Social Security issue.
Social Security is not at a crisis point. I have heard many Members,
through press clips and press accounts and even here on this floor, say
that there is a crisis, that there is a fire, that Social Security is
going bankrupt, it is going belly up. That is not true. And I hope that
through a bipartisan debate and a bipartisan plan, and I am not talking
about one or two members of the Republican Caucus, I am talking about
this entire Congress because we all have Social Security recipients
that are our constituents that are counting on us to be able to make
sure that Social Security is solvent for many years.
Mr. Speaker, I will suspend on my comments right now, but I have my
cochair here, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan). He is a distinguished
member in his own right.
We have the privilege of serving on the Committee on Armed Services
together and even on the same subcommittee. It has been indeed a
pleasure working with him. He is also on the Committee on Education and
the Workforce and Committee on Veterans' Affairs. And he is a well-
studied gentleman that I hold in high regard.
Earlier today I was talking with the gentleman about what we share
with
[[Page H507]]
not only the American people, but also with our colleagues, that this
Social Security issue is so important that we are willing to take the
debate not only here on this floor, but also take the debate out to
America.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back with the 30-
Something hour. I think it has never been more crucial to our
generation than the debate that we are having here on Social Security.
Let me first say, before I get into the Social Security debate, that
I believe that Social Security is just one of the major issues that
this Congress is facing and one of the main issues that our generation
is facing. But while this debate is going on and while you watch the
news and we are talking about Social Security or we are talking about
the war in Iraq, the President has submitted his budget to Congress.
And if you want to talk about generational fairness, like our good
friends who were here earlier in the first special order hour, talking
about generational fairness, just look at the budget that was submitted
to this Congress if you want to talk about generational fairness.
We are going to increase the Pell grant by $100 a year for 5 years
when tuitions all over the country have doubled over the past 4 or 5
years. That is not generational fairness. Cutting food stamps, which
primarily go to children, is not generational fairness. Cutting
Medicaid, which goes to poor children, is not generational fairness.
So we can have this debate, we can bring our talking points here and
march the party line and say exactly what we are told to say when we
come to the floor and when we go on the talk shows; and you can hear it
over and over.
Our colleagues on the other side are good, not always accurate, but
good. But when you hear generational fairness, think about cuts to
Medicaid, think about cuts to food stamp programs, think about the
miserly increase in the Pell grant program, $100 a year.
I think if we wanted to make young people a priority in the Congress
of the United States, we would increase Pell grant more than $100 a
year if we wanted to be fair to every generation. So while this debate
is going on here with Social Security, there is this other thing
happening with the budget, and I urge our friends at home to pay close
attention to what is happening.
One of the gentlemen over there said that it has been 70 years since
Social Security; 70 years ago Elvis was born, 70 years ago, which was
my favorite, the Great Depression was here. And I thought that was kind
of funny because here we are having a debate about putting the Social
Security system into the stock market, and one of our colleagues is
quoting how much the world has changed since the Great Depression.
Well, I am sorry, but if you had your money in the stock market, you
had your Social Security in the stock market and we had another Great
Depression, there would be a lot of issues that we would need to talk
about. But before we get into the Social Security, I want to kind of
lay a little bit of a foundation on how this whole thing works and what
the generalities are of the President's proposal, because we do not
know all the facts just yet.
What is happening here is, in order to run the Social Security
system, the worker puts in a little over 6 percent of their wages and
the employer matches that 6.2 percent, and it goes into the Social
Security trust fund.
Now, what the President is saying he wants to do is for the worker to
take that portion, and that portion of the 6.2 that the worker puts in
is debatable as to what that side is agreeing on should happen, but
they all agree that they want to put a portion of that 6.2 percent into
the side private accounts that would go into the stock market.
I think on the face of it, when you hear it and you are 20, 25, 30,
35, 40 years old, it sounds like a good idea. Here is the problem we
face when you do that: The money that you would normally be putting
into the Social Security system, your 6.2 percent that you are now
diverting over into a private account, that means that your money you
are normally putting in is not going into the Social Security system
for your parents or your grandparents. In other words, the system will
not have the money in it to handle. So the number that is floating
around just for the transition cost to go from the system we have now
to the personal accounts system is $2 trillion.
Now, we are already running a $500 billion deficit this year. So we
are going out and borrowing money and paying interest on it because we
are spending money we do not have. Now we are saying that if we
implement this Social Security program, you will have, the government
will have to go out and borrow at least $2 trillion, with a ``t'', $2
trillion, from China and Japan which is where we are borrowing our
money from now to fund the $500 billion. We have to go out to China and
Japan and get another $2 trillion and pay interest on that.
You are going to have a tax increase because we are going to have to
borrow $2 trillion in addition to the $500 billion that we are already
running with our deficit this year. So there will be a tax increase in
order to fund this system, the transition costs, and that is if the
numbers are right, if the $2 trillion numbers are right.
Now, we know that before with the war we were told weapons of mass
destruction, we were told we would be greeted as liberators, we were
told that we would use the oil money for reconstruction. It will not
cost the taxpayer any money. That never happened. We are $300 billion
into this.
Then, with the prescription drugs, we were told it was only going to
be $400 billion; then 2 months later it was $550 billion. Then we find
out today $1.2 trillion is the real number.
{time} 2000
So we do not even know if $2 trillion is the real number to do the
transition costs of the system. We are borrowing money, $2 trillion,
increasing taxes; and that is not enough to keep the system going.
There will also be a 40 percent benefit cut because all this money is
starting to go. I am 31. If I stop putting my money in, that is less
going in. My mother will have a benefit cut or people in my mom's
generation will have a benefit cut of 45 to 50 percent because of that
money that is not going in.
I am getting my taxes raised; we are borrowing money from China and
Japan. Our benefits will be cut for my mom and her generation and my
grandparents and their generation.
In addition to that, if this is not enough to convince my colleagues
this is a bad proposal, the investors on Wall Street that are running
your personal account, they are not going to do it for charity. They
are not going to do it for free. They are going to charge, and what
they charge in Chile where they have a system just like this is 20
percent.
So any benefit you may get in your personal account will be eaten up
by a tax increase, by benefit cuts, and by the user fee that you are
going to have to pay to the investor who is going to invest your money,
all the while risking the greatest social insurance program in the
history of the country.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much,
and I just want to say I think that he said something that was very
important.
If the $2 trillion number is not right, because as my colleagues
know, under this Medicare prescription drug benefit that the
administration put forth in the last Congress, we were told one number
and that was wrong, and then it was revealed that the numbers were
suppressed and the actual number is higher. Just today, looking at the
news reports, that number is even higher, and so as these mistakes are
made, future generations and even the present generation is put at risk
financially.
I can tell my colleagues one thing that is fact. We do know who will
benefit from this privatization scheme, which is $940 billion, Wall
Street, to put these public dollars in open water, to gamble.
The other issue that I thought the gentleman really laid out was the
fact there are no guarantees that the benefit level will stay where it
is now. Matter of fact, we are pretty much guaranteed that benefits
will be cut, even for those who do not take part in the privatization
accounts, and so I think it is important for us to continue to share
that with the American people.
Once again, I just want to say that Social Security is going to be
solvent for another 47 years; and also, we have
[[Page H508]]
48 million Americans that are now recipients of Social Security, and it
has a lot to do with local economies, a lot of our disabled and very
frail individuals. This is what they count on as a source of income.
I must add that we still do not have a Social Security plan. We are
just talking about principles now, guiding principles; but one thing
that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader,
shared not only with the Nation but shared with many of us here,
Democratic guiding principles to make sure that we do not increase the
deficit in any Democratic plan that is put forth, a plan that does not
send us further into debt; that every dollar will be paid for and not
borrowed that will continue to make the problem worse.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, this is
really the first thing that we need to do. No matter whether we are
talking about Social Security or the budget or whatever, first thing we
need to do in this country is plug the hole, balance the budget
immediately, and stop borrowing money from Japan and China, now. We
need to do this immediately.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, we also have one of our colleagues,
matter of fact, one of our classmates that came in with us, the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott), who is past rules chairman in the
Georgia senate and now serves here in the Congress on the Committee on
Agriculture and also on the Committee on Financial Services. He is
going to be sharing some words with us on Social Security, and it is
always a pleasure working with him and being with him, and we look
forward to his comments.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much,
my distinguished colleague from Florida (Mr. Meek) for yielding.
I certainly want to congratulate him and of course my distinguished
colleague from Ohio; and we are at a crossroads in America, and we need
to pay very, very close attention to what is happening.
I want to talk for just a few moments some plain, kitchen-table talk
because these are kitchen-table issues. These are issues of substance.
It is how your tax dollars are being spent with the budget. It is also
how we are going about to fix the most effective, most meaningful
government program that has ever been created in Social Security; and
when I get to the Social Security part, I want to stress an emphasis on
young people and African Americans because there have been some very
significant misleading statements and bad information that is being put
out.
First, let me just say a few words, if I may, on this budget, because
it is very, very problematic.
First, the Draconian cuts in discretionary spending do not reduce the
deficit. In fact, the deficit continues as far as the eye can see. This
budget is not honest because it omits many important priorities, thus
negating President Bush's promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009.
Further, this budget has the audacity to raise taxes on our veterans.
As Shakespeare's Julius Caesar said to Brutus, ``Et tu Brutus, yours is
the meanest cut of all.'' I am here to say, in this budget, the meanest
cut is to our veterans, when we need to be doing more for our veterans,
not less, and certainly not raising taxes on our veterans, as this
budget does.
Veterans, wake up. I have got so many veterans in my district down in
Atlanta, Georgia. I just spoke to the American Legion in Jonesboro,
Georgia, and they said, David, you have got to do more for the
veterans, and I said we would.
Then I come back here and see that this budget that President Bush
has submitted raises the taxes on our veterans, and then this budget
also hurts our farmers by cutting back on badly needed farm programs.
Our veterans, our farmers, no two groups of people stand for what is
right and good about this country more than our veterans and our
farmers. That is how we got started, with our farmers; and that is how
we sustain and grow our freedom in America and around the world for the
price that our veterans paid.
This budget is not balanced. In fact, this budget creates a new
record deficit of $427 billion for fiscal year 2006. This
administration's budget continues a record of deficits and rising debt
over the last 4 years. For the third year, the administration's budget
creates a new record deficit, while offering no plan to restore the
budget to balance.
The $5.6 trillion 10-year surplus inherited by this administration
from the Clinton administration, which should have been used to
strengthen Social Security, instead has been used and squandered and
replaced by a deficit of $4 trillion over the same period from 2002 to
2011.
One goal of the deficit reduction accomplished during the Clinton
administration was to save for the retirement of the baby boomers. We
have had our eye on this problem for a long time. This is not just a
problem coming and all of the sudden this administration finds that it
has all the wonders in the world. We Democrats have been grappling with
this problem of Social Security and the baby boomer generation coming
for a long time, but we vowed that we will solve the Social Security
problem without cutting benefits and without raising taxes and without
robbing the Social Security trust fund of $2 trillion to set up private
accounts.
Instead, this administration has run up mountains of new debt which
just passes the bill for today's policy choices on to our children and
our grandchildren.
Under the administration's policies, the annual burden of the Federal
debt on the typical American family will more than double over the next
10 years, with each family's share of the Federal interest payments on
the debt rising from just over $2,000 per year to around $5,000 per
year. This is not the kind of legacy we should be leaving to our
future, to our children. This debt transfer is essentially a birth tax.
This budget is not honest. Several of the President's top priorities
are omitted from this budget. What surprises me is that these projects
that he is omitting from his budget this week were signature points in
his State of the Union speech last week. These omitted policies,
including debt service, add $2 trillion to the 10-year deficit.
Not included in this budget are transition costs for privatizing
Social Security. If we are going to privatize Social Security and set
up the account, we have got to have $2 trillion. Where is that in the
budget? How is the President going to pay for it?
By delaying the start of the President's new Social Security plan
until 2009 and then phasing in over 3 years, the budget manages to
avoid showing most of the costs, but they are going to be substantial.
Social Security actuaries have estimated that the cost would be about
$750 billion over the 2009 to 2015 period alone.
Also not included in the budget are funds for the operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Listen, we are at war. We have got our troops over
there. We asked for $81 billion for them. It is not even in this
budget. I ask my colleagues, is that responsible? Just think, the
additional $81 billion being asked for this year for our soldiers, for
their armor and for the military are not even in this budget; and
according to the Congressional Budget Office, costs for operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan could run as high as $400 billion more than the
budget includes.
Another thing, the alternative minimum tax which protects middle-
income taxpayers is not in the budget, $640 billion.
Then the veterans, my heart goes out for our veterans. They will not
be able to even go into a hospital without first of all paying a fee of
$250. This budget imposes a $250 annual enrollment fee for veterans
without service-connected disabilities who also have incomes above the
VA means-tested levels, and the budget also increases pharmacy
copayments for our veterans from $7 to $15, over 100 percent. Veterans,
wake up. Get on the phone and call your Congressman and see what they
are doing to our veterans in this budget.
Both of these veterans taxes were proposed in the last two budgets;
but we in Congress rejected them and I assure my colleagues, under
Democratic leadership we will reject them again this year.
This Federal budget should be an honest blueprint for the spending
priorities of the government. However, this budget is not honest. It is
passing our
[[Page H509]]
obligations, responsibilities, and challenges to our children and
grandchildren; and that is immoral. Let us stand up for the honesty and
goodness of our Nation and reject this budget.
I want to talk for just a moment on the Social Security; but as we
can see, it is very difficult for us to even before we get to the
Social Security, we have got to explain to the American people what is
happening with this budget and the unmerciful cuts.
Despite what the President claimed in his State of the Union speech,
his proposal to privatize Social Security hurts everyone. His plan will
cut guaranteed Social Security benefits by more than 40 percent in the
coming decades, risky private accounts which will cut retirement,
disability and survivor benefits of millions of Americans and will not
help Social Security; but it will begin the process of dismantling it.
{time} 2015
And somewhere I really believe that that might be the intention.
Social Security needs a solid source of funding, not a plan that
makes the problem worse by draining $2 trillion away from this
important program and forces Americans to borrow millions of dollars
from foreign governments, as my friend from Ohio pointed out. Why do we
want to mortgage this country to China, to India, to Japan, to Saudi
Arabia? Because all of our debt is being handled by them; 90 percent of
our new debt is in the hands of foreign governments. And just the
interest alone that we are paying them is more than what we in our own
country pay for national security.
America, wake up. Social Security needs a solid source of funding and
not a plan that will make it worse. This President insists he is
undertaking this drastic dismantling of Social Security for the good of
our young people. Well, young people, I want you to listen to me
tonight. And if you know any others, please get other young people on
the phone. Go to the phone and call them and get them to listen to this
debate tonight.
The gentlemen from Georgia, Ohio, and Florida want to set the record
straight for our young people, because this administration wants
Americans to believe that private accounts are a great deal for those
under age 55. The President is wrong. Privatizing Social Security not
only does not help, it is a hindrance to the financial security of
young people, for several reasons:
First, these private accounts, young people, listen to me, these
private accounts will not be monies that will be handed to you so that
you will be free to invest however you see fit. There will be a few
plans chosen for you and handled for you, plans that are complex, have
restrictions and liabilities on them. And then there is the annuity
issue that needs to be addressed.
Again, I hope that most young Americans will begin to think about how
their lives would change if their parents did not have Social Security
on which to depend. In fact, without Social Security, their parents
would likely have to rely on them for a portion of their income. And
caring for aging parents is difficult enough for adult children without
the added burden of having to replace income from promised Social
Security benefits which were lost through the President.
Young people must realize that the problems inherent in privatizing
Social Security are there, and they must reject them.
Now, finally, I must say how disappointed and how disturbed I was
when President Bush said this. He said since black men die sooner than
whites, Social Security is a bad deal for them, and that private
accounts is a good deal for them. Now, I like President Bush
personally, and I assume he is a decent man. I have to assume also that
he must be getting some very bad information.
I agree with columnist Paul Krugman, who noted recently that
President Bush has blatantly manipulated the facts and made false
assertions all in the hope of convincing African Americans that this is
a good deal for them. The claim that black people get a bad deal from
Social Security because of a shorter life expectancy is wrong. And Mr.
Bush's use of this false argument is doubly shameful because he is
exploiting the high childhood mortality rate and the high black youth
mortality rate to promote his privatization plan instead of trying to
remove the deep inequities that remain and that black people face in
our society every day.
Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in
childhood and young adulthood. It is because of the lack of health
insurance and other health disparities. What the President is talking
about is like cutting your legs out from under you and then condemning
you for being a cripple.
What really is shameful about Mr. Bush's exploitation of this
disparity is that it is taken for granted. The persistent gap in life
expectancy between African Americans and whites is but one measure of
the deep inequalities that remain in our society, including highly
unequal access to quality health care. We ought to be trying to
diminish that gap, especially given the fact that black infants die
three times more often than whites.
In conclusion, my colleagues, let me just say that the President is
wrong on this Social Security issue and the private accounts. We have a
problem with Social Security, but that problem must be solved in a way
that stands for what is good and what is right in America. And what is
good and right in America is that we protect and strengthen Social
Security. And you do not do it with the private accounts.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman
from Georgia (Mr. Scott), and I can tell him that I concur with many of
his comments. It was a thoughtful presentation.
And just to reinforce, the trust fund has $1.7 trillion in reserves
and will provide full benefits for the next 50 years, and even 80
percent of the present benefits we have now beyond that. So to say
there is a crisis and that the sky is going to fall tomorrow is just
totally inaccurate.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Absolutely.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct, and it is very important for
the people to know that we have a surplus in Social Security as we
speak today. And the only reason we will be having a problem is because
we folks have borrowed from Social Security to pay other bills. And we
have had IOUs, which are Treasury bonds, but they are good all the way
up through 2052. And then beyond that, of course, we will even be able
to pay 80 percent of it.
But I think this kind of system with the President is that you create
as much of a crisis as you can. But I do not think the American people
will be fooled on this one, as they were with the crisis over the
weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I do not believe so either.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined by one of our very fine new colleagues from
Florida. We represent neighboring districts, and we served together in
the State legislature and now she is here in the Congress serving on
the Committee on Financial Services, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms.
Wasserman Schultz).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague so much, and
I have to say that it is a tremendous pleasure to join my 30-something
colleagues, my colleague from Florida and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Ryan). I am glad to see the ranks of the 30-somethings are expanding,
especially on our side of the gender balance. No offense to my
colleague. It is especially exciting that I can rejoin the Meek-
Wasserman Schultz tag team that we enjoyed in the Florida legislature.
I am so glad my colleagues have been spending some time this evening
talking about the significant disparities between the President's
proposal and the crisis, the so-called crisis, it seeks to address and
the facts. So I would like to spend a few minutes separating fact from
fiction and maybe boil this down to some simple terms. Because often in
Washington we talk about trillions of dollars, which is really an
unfathomable amount of money. It is so hard for anyone to think about
what $1 trillion means, never mind several trillion. So I want to spend
a little time about what this means to real people.
Clearly, the President's proposal makes Social Security weaker, not
stronger. It does nothing, as the gentleman laid out, to resolve the
funding challenges that currently face the system. The President's plan
costs nearly
[[Page H510]]
$2 trillion to implement in the first 10 years alone and several
trillion more dollars each decade after that. And his privatization
proposal bankrupts the entire system faster than it would, that is the
term he used, which was an inappropriate term, but it literally
bankrupts the system in only 15 to 20 years. And as my colleague
stated, without doing anything, which no one here is advocating, we
have another 50 years to go and we can still pay 80 percent of the
benefits.
There is a funding gap. We all agree with that. And we have to
address that funding gap. But it does not have to be closed by reducing
or cutting benefits. That is a totally inappropriate solution.
The real crisis here is not in Social Security; the real crisis is
the poor management of the Federal budget. That is the bottom line. We
have someone here who has been mishandling the direction of the Federal
budget, and it needs to be fixed.
When I see a problem in my household budget, what my husband and I do
is, we make sure that we do not give that problem an overdose of
medicine. When we address a problem with our budget, we address it in a
way that is proportionate to the size of the problem. We give the
problem not an overdose of medicine, but we give the problem an
aspirin. And that is the difference here.
We saw earlier this week that the President's budget does not even
cover the cost of any Social Security reform. This is despite the fact
that extending the tax cuts permanently costs five times more than
fixing Social Security for you, for me, for our children, and for their
children. If we rolled back the President's tax breaks for just the
wealthiest 1 percent, it would cover most of the funding gap right
there, most of the funding gap just by the wealthiest 1 percent of
Americans, rolling back their tax cut and not making it permanent.
Of course, the Bush administration today eliminated any discussion of
limiting tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans or anyone
else just to ensure Social Security's solvency.
The bottom line is that privatized accounts put Americans' hard-
earned retirement savings at the whims of the stock market. I do not
know too many people out there that have had a tremendous amount of
confidence in the stock market these days so that they would trust
their entire retirement future and the security of that to the whims of
the stock market.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will yield, I think
that is a tremendous point that we have overlooked, and that is why we
get an hour to do this, to make all our points.
This benefit that we have now is guaranteed. It is inflation adjusted
and guaranteed. No matter what, you get your benefit. I think what the
gentlewoman from Florida is saying, what happens if in 2000 or 2001,
when you open up your 401(k) one day, it is cut in half and you were
planning on retiring and it takes another 10 years to get back to where
you once were, all this risk for no real gain overall?
Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentlewoman.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thank my colleague, Mr. Speaker.
Another important point, and why the three of us are here tonight
highlighting this, is because our generation needs to understand the
President has laid out a rosy scenario under his proposal that simply
does not exist. No group of Americans has more reason to fight the
privatization of Social Security than young Americans and young workers
and their families. The President's proposal cuts benefits, it pulls
the rug out from underneath our retirement security, and it adds
trillions to the debt.
Privatization will ultimately result in a crisis that means millions
of young people will basically be forced to work into their 70s, when
right now, under the current system, they could retire far earlier with
a guaranteed benefit. And they would have to ultimately pay higher
income taxes for the rest of their lives.
I want to talk just briefly about the simple terms that I described
earlier. This is how the President's proposal hurts everyone. The costs
of privatization clearly explode the national debt. Most Americans
understand what happens when you run up your credit card bill and do
not pay it off. It is impossible to get out from under that debt, never
mind trying to get a bank loan based on the credit you have, because
your credit is gone.
That is exactly what the President is doing here, essentially. He is
using up America's credit, yours, mine, our children's, even our
grandchildren's to fund a radical and untested program that puts the
safety of America's workers and retirees at risk. That is really the
bottom line. Because of the misplaced spending priorities, the national
debt has grown so large that an average family of four pays thousands
of dollars each year to pay down the government's debt, which is just
like the interest that you pay on a credit card when you do not pay off
that debt every month.
Imagine what that family is going to owe when trillions of dollars
are added to their monthly statements in the form of new and higher
taxes. And what do they get for all that spending? Benefit cuts,
removal of their retirement security, all of which is subject to the
whims of politicians and the stock market's fluctuations. And that is
totally inappropriate public policy, and young Americans should be as
deeply disturbed as we are.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell my colleague
from Florida that many of the individuals that are beating their chests
about the President's plan, and I will not even call it a plan because
there is no plan; I have not received a bound copy from the White House
saying this is the Social Security plan.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Maybe he did not send it to you.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Well, maybe he did not. But I do not think
anyone has it, and I think there is a lot of Federal jet fuel being
burned flying throughout the country, lining up individuals that are
excited to see the President of the United States, but who may not
fully understand the fact that they are going to receive fewer
benefits, that Social Security is there for them for the next 50 years,
and even beyond that with 80 percent of the benefits if we did nothing
as relates to Social Security.
We have to make sure that we maintain and do the things that not only
the Democratic Congress did along with President Reagan, making sure we
kept Social Security sound for future generations, but we need to make
sure we do it in a way that we are not scaring Americans and making
them feel that the sky is going to fall when it is not.
{time} 2030
The only thing that is guaranteed here is that $940 billion that will
then fall into Wall Street and the companies, maybe the two or three
that will be chosen to handle these private accounts, that will give
young Americans, or even middle-aged Americans because, remember, the
President said if you are over 55, do not worry. He also told us a
number of things as relates to Medicare, and we are finding out it is
not true. I am not saying that the President is not being truthful with
us; I am just saying we are not getting good information.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, so we are going from a guaranteed
benefit for Social Security recipients to a guaranteed payment for
those Wall Street investors. No matter what happens, whether the
investments or the portfolios they are negotiating go up or down, they
are going to get paid, guaranteed. Why would you shift that from the
beneficiaries?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring up something that
maybe has not been discussed and that is the disproportionate impact
that the President's plan will have on women. Women are already
starting far behind the eight ball as compared to men in their
earnings. There are a number of factors that leave women even more
vulnerable to this radical proposal than it leaves men.
In 2003, for example, the average monthly Social Security benefit for
a woman was only $798. That is $241 less than the average man's monthly
retirement. Women's earnings are 77 percent relative to men back in
2002. Women who reach retirement age live, on average, at least 3 years
longer than men, and Social Security is the only source of retirement
income for one in three unmarried women.
[[Page H511]]
Without Social Security, 52 percent of white women, 65 percent of
African American women, and 61 percent of Hispanic women would live in
poverty upon retirement without the safety net that Social Security
provides. It provides more than half of the total income for female
widows and for single women.
So when the President talks about the different groups that his
proposal would disproportionately benefit, he does not seem to care
that we would leave women in this country completely out in the cold.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to emphasize that the
young people need to realize that if you were to make this move into a
private account, you will correspondingly have benefits cut down the
road. You are going to lose in benefits far more than you would in the
accounts with the risk-taking involved and because your Social Security
investment is protected from inflation, it is guaranteed, and when you
have those cuts taken away as a result of going into the private
accounts, it should make one stop and think a little bit before even
entertaining the idea of going into private accounts because they would
correspond in the cuts.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I see the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Ryan) has some examples of what can happen to many of the young people,
and the gentleman knows he is in charge of the charts. I just want to
say, it is important to not only give our e-mail address out, because
we want to continue to talk with Americans about this issue, and also
Members of Congress we would say, and even the other body, to go onto
our Web site to get information on what we talked about today with the
Democratic leader of going out into America, speaking to groups that
want to know more information about what this Social Security
privatization scheme has in store for them if we fail them as a
Congress.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right that
we should have a debate about this.
To e-mail us, it is 30something [email protected].
We have some charts here that kind of play out President Bush's
scenario with four younger people. The one we have here is 18-year-old
Ashley. We wanted to get a woman in there. These are the benefits under
current law, what Ashley would get when she retires in 2052.
Under the current benefit, she would get $1,628 if we do not do
anything. Under President Bush's good blueprint, which is the best case
scenario, but we have to factor in tax cuts, the 20 percent you have to
give the investors, the borrowed money, everything else, the risk is
probably not included in here, Ashley would get $1,099. So you are
talking about a $529 difference. This is our system that we have today,
and the Ponzi scheme which has been proposed. That is Ashley.
Now we have Eric. Eric is 28 years old, lives in Miami, Florida. He
retires in 2042. Under current law, when Eric retires in 2042, Eric
would get $1,478 a month. In 2042, under the President's best case
scenario, which we call the good blueprint, Eric would get $1,098 which
is a $380 difference per month, just doing the math quickly.
Clearly, under the current system, Eric at age 28, if you are
listening and you are 28 and we keep things solvent, maybe make some
minor adjustments to keep the system going, you get almost $1,500 a
month and under President Bush's plan, $1,100 a month.
Last we have Jennifer. Jennifer is from Ohio. She is 38 years old.
She retires in 2032, a little closer. Under the current law, she will
get $1,343 a month. Under President Bush's scheme, $1,099. There is
still a $250 a month cut because there is less money going in.
People are putting money in private accounts. There is an increase in
taxes because you have to borrow $2 trillion and you have to pay your
investors their 20 percent for making the deals for you. So even
someone 38 years old retiring in 2032 is still going to see under
President Bush's plan a cut of $250.
All we are saying is, we have a guaranteed benefit. The system is
working. No one is going to hit the lottery on this system; we
understand that. But it was not meant to hit the lottery. It was meant
as a social insurance program. Fifty percent of the beneficiaries, if
they did not get Social Security, would live in poverty; and we are
going to flip this system upside down and go borrow $2 trillion from
the Chinese, who are cleaning our clock economically anyway. It does
not make a whole lot of sense.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that people
understand that we are not just talking teenagers, we are not just
talking about 20 or 30 something. Here is Bill. Here is an example. And
many of these numbers, as we start talking about Social Security being
able to provide the benefits that it has now, is not the Davis, Scott,
Wasserman Schultz, Meek and Ryan report, this is from the Congressional
Budget Office, numbers that they have given us. This is not anything
that we sat in a room and said, let us see what works towards our favor
here. This is fact and this is reality.
Here is Bill, who is 48, from Georgia, probably from Montezuma where
my folks are in Georgia. Let us say Bill retires at 2022. Under the
present benefits, he has $1,266 in the year 2022. But under what the
President is proposing under his privatization scheme that will
guarantee billions for the corporations that are already prospering
under his administration, and I mean the big corporations, not the
small ones, he will receive under the Bush plan, $1,141.
To create a crisis, to then step into a gamble is unfair to the
American worker. It is unfair to American families, and I must add
family benefits and survivor benefits are holding families, people who
work every day, folks who wake up and catch the early bus in the
morning, people who know what it means to have a 15-minute break in the
afternoon and in the morning, these are people who work every day.
Here in this Congress, we have to make choices. Here, in the
Democratic Caucus and in the 30-Something Group, we have made the
choice to be on the side of the individual that works every day and has
paid into the system every day and expects that we will not go back on
the deal as the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) pointed out earlier,
as we have done to veterans, and we are doing to veterans in this
budget that the President has put forth. It is very unfortunate.
It is time for not only the American people to wake up, but also for
Members of Congress to wake up and stop following the so-called leader,
and say, this is wrong and I am not going to move forward with a plan
that is going to give my constituents less than what they had when I
was elected.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I know we are using Congressional
Budget Office numbers, and that needs to be understood. We are not just
making this up to fit the picture that we want to show here.
But the question I have is, when I sat in the Chamber and listened to
the President deliver the State of the Union address, my understanding
of the President's proposal was that he would try to put forward a
proposal that would ensure future retirees would have more money. The
illusion that he has created is that by privatizing Social Security,
putting the future of Social Security into the stock market, he led
people to believe Wednesday night that they would retire with more
money than they would have if we left the system as it is. But each of
the graphs I have seen here tonight shows consistently there is less
money for each scenario, whether you are the youngest future retiree or
the oldest future retiree.
How are we wrong and he is right? How is it that he does not see that
he is costing the government trillions of dollars, pulling the rug out
from under our retirees and causing them to have less money, not more?
What are we not getting here?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this is a real pattern of behavior. I
think when we are talking to the young students out there, the 20-
somethings and 30-somethings, and we look at the track record of the
last 4 years, weapons of mass destruction, oil money for
reconstruction, American taxpayers are not going to have to pay a dime.
Mr. Wolfowitz testified $5 billion was all the Americans were going to
have to pay, and now we are $300 billion in; and that we would be
greeted as liberators, and on and on and on. None of that was true.
[[Page H512]]
Then we went to the Medicare bill. It was $400 billion. Two months
later, it was $550 billion. And today, and it is funny, if it was not
so sad, it would be hilarious, $1.2 trillion. We went from $400 billion
when we voted on this thing, to $1.2 trillion. So this is clearly a
pattern. So when they come to us with this proposal, how are we
supposed to believe them? How are the young people supposed to believe
them?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. So is their theory, if they say it enough
times, it will become true?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think that is it. Basically we are going to bet
the ponies, and we do not have any money in our pocket, so we are going
to put it on our credit card at 21 percent. We have to pay the Chinese
back because they issued us the credit card. It is a dangerous game.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important that
we reflect and understand the purpose of Social Security. This is an
insurance program. We have investment programs for the stock market. We
have 401(k)s in which an employer and an employee contributes. We have
other kinds of alternatives. But, remember, it was the Democratic Party
that birthed Social Security. It has been the Democratic Party that has
protected Social Security. Social Security has been the bulwark of
making America have the highest standard of living.
Let us not forget the words of the gentleman who produced Social
Security, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said we want to make sure that
at no time in America will any of our people, as they get old, succumb
to the throes and the woes of poverty.
{time} 2045
It is an insurance program, plain and simple. If they want private
accounts, there is nothing wrong with investing in the stock market.
There are opportunities to do that. They have 401(k)s. But Social
Security is there.
And I just say we are addressing most of our remarks to 20-somethings
and 30-somethings, but our 20-somethings and 30-somethings will soon be
40-somethings and 50-somethings and 60-somethings. At the end of the
day, we need to make sure that we do not disturb that cushion that has
provided America with the highest standard of living in the world, and
that cushion is Social Security.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman
from Georgia (Mr. Scott) could not say it better.
And just in closing, Mr. Speaker, as we close, we want to make sure
that we want people to go on to find out more about not only what House
Democrats are talking about, but as it relates to our tour throughout
the country. It is democraticleader.house.gov/30something. Also, we
would close with the message that Democrats want to strengthen Social
Security without slashing benefits to Americans that they have earned.
Private accounts make the Social Security challenge worse, enforce
massive benefit cuts, and increase the national debt. Once President
Bush stops insisting on private accounts, then we can have a true
debate as it relates to making sure the promise of Social Security will
be around for future generations to come.
It is always a pleasure to co-chair this hour with the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Ryan). And also I want to thank the gentlewoman from Florida
(Ms. Wasserman Schultz) for being a part of the working group 30-
something. And to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott), it is always
good to have a 40-something. I will go ahead and put it that way.
____________________