[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H923-H924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HECKLING IS NOT A SOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fortenberry). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting experience to be 
here and listen to the debate tonight on Social Security. I found it 
interesting in particular to listen to the gentleman from New Jersey 
read accounts from town hall meetings where Republicans have been 
attempting to explain the problems that we are facing with Social 
Security and how many groups, moveon.org, AARP, and others have come to 
disrupt those meetings.
  I do not know if liberals or the Democrats are proud of that, that 
their supporters are going in to heckle and boo. It seems they are. 
What does that contribute to the debate? Not much in my opinion. There 
is a saying that you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your 
own facts.
  If we look at the facts on Social Security, there are the following: 
when Social Security started in the 1930s, there were some 42 workers 
per retiree. In the 1950s, that went to 16 workers per retiree. Today 
we are down to three workers per retiree. By the time I retire, there 
will be probably two workers per retiree. You cannot argue with the 
demographics, and that is where we are headed. Those are the facts. 
With those facts you have to understand we have got to do something 
different. This pay-as-you-go system simply is not a model that is 
going to work with demographics like that.
  Fact number two, it was just mentioned a few minutes ago there is a 
trust fund that is going to pay out until the year 2042. Where is that 
trust fund and what does it contain? It is a couple of file cabinets in 
West Virginia that contain a couple of IOUs. There is no trust fund; 
there is no money. It is just IOUs. As soon as we start taking out more 
than we are paying in, we are simply going to incur more debt upon debt 
we already have. You can talk about the year 2042 and we do not have to 
worry until then, that is assuming there is money in a trust fund. If 
somebody knows where that money is hidden, please tell us because it 
simply is not there. It is a file cabinet with IOUs in it.
  Fact number three, there is no easy fix. I just heard one so-called 
solution that we simply lift the earnings cap so people like Bill Gates 
who make millions of dollars every year would pay more than just Social 
Security on the first $90,000 of income. That sounds good; but upon 
review, if we included all of the millionaires and others making more 
than $90,000 a year, we asked the actuaries what it would do, and it 
would postpone insolvency just 6 years. So we are just talking on the 
margins.
  Raising the payroll tax, we have done that since the 1930s 19 times. 
We simply cannot continue to go down that road. I would like to hear 
somebody seriously propose that. What do we set it at? How much more do 
we want to tax people?
  We have to harness the power of compound interest. We need a new 
model. That is what the President is proposing. I think it was Albert 
Einstein who said the most powerful force in the universe is that of 
compound interest. We have to allow individuals to harness that.
  I commend the President for taking the position he has taken. The 
difference between being a leader and a follower is when you are a 
leader, you recognize that the people may not be with you and you may 
need to persuade them and convince them and go out and tell them there 
is a problem.
  There are formidable foes out there, the AARP and others, who will 
put out information and say there is no problem, there is a trust fund 
somehow and we do not have to deal with this issue for another 40 years 
or so. So there is a lot of educating that has to be done. That is what 
a leader does. A follower says that is where the people are, I do not 
have to convince them, I just have to join them, and we will just 
heckle and boo anybody who proposes a solution. That is not leadership, 
and I am glad the President is actually leading on this, and I commend 
my colleagues for leading on it as well.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a serious issue. There is no more serious debate 
that we will have in this coming decade domestically than how to deal 
with this issue. How do we give individuals the freedom to be more 
secure in their own retirement. I tend to believe that in the end if 
you present Americans out there two politicians, one who will stand and 
say, yes, there is a problem,

[[Page H924]]

we need a fix, and the other who will say there is no problem, there is 
a trust fund somewhere that will fix it, I think in the end Americans 
will believe the politician who fesses up to the fact that there is a 
problem. Demographics do not lie, and we have to deal with it in the 
future. I commend the President and those moving towards a real 
solution and who are presenting actual proposals that will move us in 
the direction we need to go.

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