[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 27 (Wednesday, March 9, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2305-S2306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the President of the United States is on 
the road today. He is taking his case for privatization of Social 
Security around the United States. It is an interesting debate. It is a 
good debate because it gets down to the heart of the question.
  I joined with some Democratic Senate leadership--Harry Reid, Byron 
Dorgan, and several other colleagues--and we went on the road last week 
to New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Las Vegas to talk about this 
issue. We are engaging the American people because we believe it is an 
important debate.
  I think we should start the debate by agreeing on some very basic 
points, and the first point on which we should agree is that at the end 
of the debate, Social Security will still be there, it will survive, 
and we are all committed to it. Any proposal that comes from anyone of 
either political party that weakens Social Security and lessens the 
likelihood that it will be there as a safety net for America should be 
summarily rejected. That is why we on the Democratic side have said we 
want to sit down with President Bush and the Republican leadership to 
make Social Security strong, but first we have to take privatization of 
Social Security off the table because privatization of Social Security, 
as the President is proposing, will weaken Social Security, it will not 
strengthen it. It takes trillions of dollars out of the Social Security 
trust fund, a trust fund that has already been raided by politicians 
for years. It would be devastated by taking out this much money.
  The President is calling for taking the money out of the Social 
Security trust fund that is going to be used to pay off retirees in the 
years to come.
  How do they make up for this? The President's White House proposes 
cutting the benefits for retirees as much as 50 percent. So if someone 
is receiving $1,200 today, had the President's plan been in effect from 
the beginning of Social Security, they would be receiving around $500. 
It is a dramatic cut the President is talking about. It would push many 
senior citizens into poverty, not to mention add dramatically to our 
national debt, a debt which is already too large, will be increased 
this year by our deficit spending, and a debt which is financed by 
foreign countries. China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan hold America's 
mortgage.
  President Bush's privatization plan means that mortgages will grow 
substantially, from about $8 trillion to at least $15 trillion by the 
President's calculations. That means our children, who are supposed to 
be benefited by this so-called privatization, will not only have to 
gamble their retirement in the stock market, but also face the payment 
of this debt. That is fundamentally unfair.
  Many people have said: Why don't the Democrats come forward with a 
plan on Social Security? I will tell my colleagues the Democratic plan 
in three words: Social Security first. If any plan to strengthen Social 
Security does not guarantee that this safety net and the benefits 
people can count on for retirement will be there in the years to come, 
it is not a plan we should even consider. Privatization cannot meet 
that guarantee.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the 
Democratic side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 6 minutes 50 seconds remaining.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I concur with the remarks of the Senator 
from Illinois about Social Security. We have heard a lot of talk on 
this floor. We have heard a lot of talk on the television shows and all 
around the country in recent weeks about Social Security. We have heard 
about a supposed crisis in this program, that it will be flat busted or 
broke, we have heard about the President's view that this social 
insurance program must be radically restructured, and we have heard 
that privatizing Social Security is the only way to go.
  Now we hear that the President is embarking on a 60-stop campaign 
tour in an effort to sell his privatization plan to the American 
people. The American people are not buying this risky privatization 
scheme.
  From the day this debate began, I have consistently said that any 
proposal put forward to address Social Security must meet a few basic 
standards. It has to preserve Social Security's guaranteed benefit. It 
has to preserve Social Security's protections for workers when they are 
disabled. It has to protect against benefit reductions, especially for 
women, minorities, and others, and it has to protect our budget from 
ever-growing deficits.
  This week in the Senate we saw the first bill that purports to reform 
Social Security, and, unfortunately, that new legislative proposal 
fails my simple test in a few not-so-simple ways. First, preservation 
of the guaranteed benefit has to be our top priority. The bedrock of 
Social Security is the guaranteed benefit, and the President's plan 
calls for cutting benefits by one-third or more. That is a huge hit to 
every retiree who depends on this system. Like Bush's plan, the new 
Senate bill will also slash benefits. That plan has a further 7 percent 
reduction in benefits for early retirees relative to current law that 
is phased in between 2024 and 2028.

  In conjunction with the two pieces of the plan that raise the 
retirement age, the proposal would reduce benefits for retirees--people 
who are retiring at 62--by 40 percent by the year 2026, by 50 percent 
by the year 2054, and it will reduce them by 56 percent by the year

[[Page S2306]]

2080. The deconstruction of the guaranteed benefit leads us further 
away from the real security this program provides, and this country 
needs to know that even though Republicans do not like to campaign on 
it, their plans would end the guaranteed benefit Social Security 
provides today.
  A few weeks ago, I joined several of my female colleagues on the 
Senate floor to speak about how the President's plan would impact 
women. Unfortunately, this is not a new battle. For years, we have 
fought to ensure that women and minorities receive a fair shake in 
Social Security reform discussions. The promise of Social Security is 
especially important to women. Why? Because women face unique 
challenges when they retire. We know women make less money throughout 
their lifetimes, so we know when they retire they have fewer dollars to 
live on. Women also leave the workforce to raise their families. That 
is a value that we all support and endorse and want women to be able to 
do, but that means they have less money when they retire. Finally, 
women live longer. That is a fact. And they are more likely to suffer 
from a chronic health condition. So they, in particular, rely on the 
security of Social Security. With those special challenges women face, 
we know today Social Security keeps a lot of older women out of 
poverty. The benefit formulas of Social Security are tilted to give a 
greater rate of return for lower wage workers such as women and 
minorities.
  Unfortunately, time and time again, we have found that these 
proposals will impoverish women and slash their benefits. The new plan 
that has been offered in the Senate is no exception. That plan will cut 
benefits based on a new life-expectancy requirement. The Senate 
Republican plan says:

       By factoring increased life expectancy into the base 
     benefit calculation, the rate of increase in benefit payments 
     will be slowed.

  Addressing the long-term solvency of Social Security is a laudable 
goal, but trying to balance the books by slashing benefits for women is 
absolutely unacceptable. This plan would dismantle the progressive 
nature of Social Security benefits, leaving women with less money over 
a longer period of time. So if one is a woman who retires at 62 or 65 
and lives to be 95, under these plans they will not be able to make it. 
Their Social Security benefits will be reduced, and they will not be 
able to live off what they retired on 30 years prior to that.
  It makes no sense to reduce women's benefits. They are already 
limited by their lower income, and cutting them again simply because 
they live longer is just wrong. In fact, we should be doing all we can 
to ensure progressive benefits for low wage earners that are targeted 
to those least likely to have other retirement savings. All too often, 
as we know, that means women.

  I know I am not going to stand for this attack on women, and I know 
many of my colleagues are going to stand right alongside me in this 
fight.
  Finally, there is another important issue I will talk about today 
that no one on the other side of the aisle or the other side of 
Pennsylvania Avenue cares to talk about, and that is these Social 
Security plans will add trillions of dollars to an already massive 
Federal debt, a debt that we are just handing over to the generation 
coming behind us.
  In traveling the country to sell his privatization plan, President 
Bush has been saying we have an obligation and a duty to confront 
problems and not pass them on to future generations. Well, many of us 
on both sides of the aisle agree with him. We should not create new 
problems for the next generation to handle. The trouble is, the 
President's plan actually adds to the problems of the next generation. 
It does nothing to solve them.
  This new Republican plan, just like President Bush's, would add 
trillions of dollars in debt to our country's financial sheets in the 
next two decades alone. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy 
Priorities said that the privatization proposal will create nearly $5 
trillion in new debt over the next 20 years. That money is going to 
have to come from somewhere, and it is naive to think that huge new 
borrowing will not affect current retirees. It is also naive to think 
that massive new borrowing will not affect programs such as Medicare 
and Medicaid that really do need our attention. It is naive to think we 
will simply go along and pass on these massive new problems to our 
children and our grandchildren.
  So once again we are left to consider privatization plans that run up 
massive new debt on the country's credit card while pulling money away 
from the Social Security system and ending the bedrock of the program--
the guaranteed benefit. That is a recipe for disaster.
  The President and his friends in the Senate are fixated on private 
accounts, even though they will do absolutely nothing to address the 
long-term solvency of the Social Security program.
  Last week, I joined with 41 of my colleagues to ask President Bush to 
take this risky scheme off the table before moving forward with any 
Social Security reform. The letter said, in part, funding privatized 
accounts with Social Security dollars would not only make the program's 
long-term problems worse, but many believe it represents a first step 
towards undermining the program's fundamental goals. Therefore, so long 
as this proposal is on the table, we believe it will be impossible to 
establish the kind of cooperative bipartisan process we need to truly 
address the challenges facing the program many decades in the future.
  We will not stand for the President's plan for social insecurity. We 
will continue to stand for future generations against a private 
solution that simply adds trillions of dollars in debt to future 
generations. We want to be proud of what we pass along to our children 
and grandchildren.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I do not know if it is appropriate at this 
time to ask that we return to S. 256, the pending business of the 
Senate.

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