[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 32 (Wednesday, March 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H1610-H1614]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2330
                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Drake). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. Northup) 
is recognized for the remaining time until midnight as the designee of 
the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mrs. NORTHUP. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special 
Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Kentucky?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to highlight an important

[[Page H1611]]

issue that has been the topic of much discussion across the country, 
Social Security. The Republicans in Congress have joined together to 
form teams to highlight important issues facing our Nation today, and I 
am proud to serve as the chairman of the Retirement Security team and 
to be joined by a number of my colleagues to discuss this important 
topic tonight.
  First, I would like to invite the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. 
Blackburn), my colleague, to share with us some of her perspectives on 
Social Security and how we address those challenges.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Kentucky 
for yielding and allowing me to participate in this debate.
  Madam Speaker, as we begin tonight, I tell my colleagues I just have 
to comment, listening to my colleagues from across the aisle, one would 
think if they were listening to this great debate that we are having 
here that they believe everything depends on the government; the 
panacea has to be the government; the solution to the problems, it has 
all got to be the government.
  As we talk about Social Security, we want to welcome them and invite 
them to come participate in the debate, but I find it so interesting. 
They do not bring new ideas to this debate, and they keep saying let us 
let the government tend to it, but they do not want to talk about the 
importance of developing an ownership society. They do not want to talk 
about giving power to the people.
  I always wonder when I hear someone say government is the solution, 
government has got the solution, leave it to government, let them work 
it out, let us grow a bigger government. I think about Ronald Reagan 
and how he always said it is all about the people. It is all about the 
people. That is where the solutions lie.
  Whatever the debate is, whatever our colleagues across the aisle, 
whatever their view is on Social Security reform, I would hope that no 
one will oppose a discussion on this issue.
  We are brought here to Washington, those of us that are elected, and 
we come to Congress to participate in big issues that are going to 
impact individuals' lives and the American people's lives. It is true 
that our country has a range of problems that we are facing right now, 
but I think it is fair to say and I think that my colleague would agree 
with me that strengthening and stabilizing Social Security is at the 
top of that list.
  I would invite our colleagues from across the aisle to join us in 
this debate, bring some ideas and to participate in how we should look 
at Social Security for future generations. I think it is very 
unfortunate that so many across the aisle are following the lead of the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader, and 
nearly every Democrat in the House has chosen to stifle debate, rather 
than to engage in it, and I think that is not leadership. It is really 
obstructionism.
  Madam Speaker, about a week ago, President Bush visited Memphis, 
Tennessee, which is just outside of my district, and I would have liked 
to have been there and been a part of that, but things did not quite 
work out that way for me on last Friday. That did not stop the 
Democratic National Committee from attacking both the President and me 
in a statewide radio ad.
  Their ad was misleading at best, and it essentially said that we 
should not even debate reform. They are essentially saying that we 
should bury our head in the sand and ignore the problem until it just 
goes on and runs over us. I can tell my colleagues, the DNC attack ad 
generated two calls. Only two calls to my Shelby County, Memphis, area 
office in opposition to any type reform. They spent all their money, 70 
stations, State-wide, and we got two negative calls. Fifty calls from 
people who said I think we can talk about Social Security reform but 
let us not squash the discussion.
  In fact, I have an e-mail from a man in Collierville, which is in 
Shelby County near Memphis, and he says: I was listening to WREC radio 
today and heard a rather obnoxious DNC commercial telling me to contact 
you to vote against the President's effort to modify Social Security. I 
am contacting you but rather to encourage you to work with the 
President to pass a reform.
  On the day of the President's visit, a front page article in the 
local news section of the Nashville Tennessean read, Bush trip puts 
Democrats' focus on Blackburn. President in Memphis for next stop in 
Social Security debate. All this because we want to have a discussion. 
We want to talk about a very real problem and what we are going to do 
about it.
  Now, is it not amazing, here in America, here in the United States 
House of Representatives, here in Congress, when you want to lead on a 
discussion and bring to the attention of the American people something 
that is a problem, then it makes you a political target. That is 
absolutely incredible. Facing a problem, addressing and defining a 
problem and then working to find a solution, that is what is called 
leadership.
  Since last fall, I have been holding town hall meetings and 
discussions across my district, and we have been talking about Social 
Security reform in these. We are letting constituents know the process 
that we are going through and how we are searching for the right thing, 
the right steps to take, and I will not sugarcoat things here. Some 
people are absolutely opposed to the discussion. They will not consider 
the idea of reform, any kind of reform, but that is not the norm. I 
found that most people are not only willing to discuss reform, but they 
have their own ideas of what we should do, and that tells me something. 
People are thinking about this issue.
  The Democrats in the House are unwilling, really unwilling to discuss 
the topic. They refuse to come to the table and say, okay, let us see 
what we can do to fix this problem. They are out of touch with 
mainstream America. They were out of touch in the last election cycle, 
and they remain out of touch today.
  I have brought with me today, Madam Speaker, a handful of the 
thousands of e-mails that I have received to share with you.
  Here is one from a gentleman in Arlington, Tennessee. It is also in 
Shelby County, down near Memphis, and he says: While I agree 
privatization accounts should not be the number one focus, they are a 
significant factor in this issues reform. Please accept the 
correspondence as a vote in favor of President Bush's proposal. He goes 
on and details some of the things that he likes and does not like about 
what he is hearing.
  On the other side, I have got one from a woman in Nashville, 
Tennessee: I am opposed to the privatization of Social Security. I am 
in favor of reform, but there are many people who could pay more into 
Social Security or maybe take less out.
  Another man from Collierville, Tennessee: Can you help pass Social 
Security reform? I would appreciate the opportunity to invest a 
percentage of my Social Security payments.
  Does that not sound like a pretty good debate. These people are not 
afraid to discuss it. America is discussing the issue. We would like to 
think that the Democrats would also.
  We have several bills in the House and the Senate that are proposing 
different reforms, and I want Tennesseans to know that I am going to 
continue to review these ideas, to talk with them about the bills that 
are being brought forward, and we will continue to support committee 
action on a range of proposals.
  Some of the e-mails that I have received ask why we are doing this 
now, why we cannot just put it off for another decade. It is similar to 
refinancing your house. You refinance your home mortgage today and get 
a much lower interest rate than you could probably 10 years from now. 
Why would you wait when conditions will never be better than they are 
now? Well, that is where with what we have to do with Social Security. 
Conditions for reform will not get any better than they are now. It 
makes no sense to wait.

                              {time}  2340

  Last week I wrote an op-ed that ran in the Memphis Commercial Appeal 
newspaper where I talked about four indisputable facts regarding Social 
Security that we should all be able to agree on regardless of our party 
affiliation or ideology. Those facts are these: in 1950, there were 16 
workers paying into Social Security for every one retiree. Today there 
are only 3.3

[[Page H1612]]

workers for every retiree, and by the time my two children who are in 
their mid-twenties retire, there will only be two workers for every 
retiree. We have 13 years when the Social Security will begin taking in 
less money than it pays out to retirees.
  It is time for us to move forward. We know that the American people 
are engaged in this debate. We know that they are participating in this 
debate. I have had a survey on my Web site running for a week now, and 
I have had a tremendous response to this. I will tell my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle, they had better start taking part in this 
very real, very lively discussion because there is a widespread view 
that we should do something and do it now. The only people willing to 
work on this are the Republicans and the Republican leadership in 
Congress.
  It is a disservice to our Nation that our colleagues across the aisle 
do not want to participate. It is not why we were sent here to 
Congress.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from 
Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) who has been such a leader in our conference 
and is so eager to participate in this conversation.
  There is a lot of misinformation about Social Security that is being 
promulgated across this country, but I think the most important facts 
that we can share with our constituents is that of every program and 
every idea that has been put forward, nobody wants to change anything 
for today's seniors, and there is a good reason for that.
  For today's seniors, there are enough workers in the system that 
their Social Security check is protected. They are going to be fine. 
For those people that are about to retire, there are enough workers and 
enough money in the system to protect them. But for younger workers who 
are going to bear the responsibility for those who retire before them, 
there will not be enough workers to provide for their Social Security 
check. So what we want is to allow younger workers to begin to build 
their own nest egg so they can prepare for their own retirement as they 
shoulder the responsibility for those that retire before them.
  Madam Speaker, I welcome the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola) and 
thank the gentleman for being part of this discussion tonight. I know 
the gentleman is involved in talking about Social Security in his 
community. Please discuss some of what you hear and some of the 
misconceptions.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her 
leadership on this issue. She is a tremendous leader and a clear voice 
in the House on this issue.
  The President has recently been in my district, and I thank the 
President for his leadership on this issue as well, and for him taking 
on one of the most important issues we face as a Nation today and 
critical to future generations of Americans.
  The President understands that we solve problems through leadership 
and leaders do not pass along problems to future Presidents or future 
generations. It was an extraordinary event when the President was in 
South Bend, Indiana, at Notre Dame, which I know is an institution very 
dear to the gentlewoman's heart, and the numbers who engaged in the 
dialogue on this issue were astounding.
  There were over 8,000 people at the Joyce Center at Notre Dame. They 
came to listen to the President talk about this issue. And there were 
200 people outside of the Joyce Center that were protesting the 
President. I would say that is a pretty good ratio. That reflects the 
common sense of the American people. They understand we have a problem.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Madam Speaker, that is very reflective of the numbers 
in my district. There were about 2,000 inside listening to the 
President. There were a number of organizations that tried to stir up a 
lot of activity outside to protest. There were about 100 people outside 
protesting.
  That morning AARP had held their own roundtable, their own town hall 
meeting in order to share why they thought the President was wrong on 
this issue. They of course have massive organization, a huge mailing 
list, and they actually got 40 people to their town hall meeting. So I 
think people know that the organizations that are saying there is no 
problem and we should not be doing anything about it, whether it is to 
seniors as in seniors that are retired or seniors as in seniors in 
college that might be found on the Notre Dame campus, both of those 
groups are eager to talk about it and be part of the discussion.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Madam Speaker, that is absolutely true. I think one of 
the reasons that the President got reelected and I think one of the 
reasons the gentlewoman has been reelected in a very competitive 
district is people appreciate leadership. It is easy to be against 
things, but we are elected as public servants to be for solutions; and 
the harder the issue, the more responsibility we have to step up to the 
plate and solve the problems that we face as a Nation.
  What I heard the President say when he was in South Bend is we have a 
problem. We can call it a crisis, whatever we want; but it is clearly 
and undeniable challenge, and I think the American people understand 
that.
  I heard the President say it is not the seniors' problem. If you are 
retired or near retirement, your benefits are safe and secure and you 
are going to get everything you have earned, and all options are on the 
table. This is a debate that should be engaged in by all. The President 
said it does not matter if it is a Republican idea, a Democrat idea, 
any good idea will be embraced and be part of the solution.
  I think it is important that we focus on the facts. Recently, I sat 
in a hearing of the Committee on Ways and Means where David Walker who 
is the Comptroller General of the United States, a former trustee of 
Social Security, and he made a pretty profound statement that we need 
to focus on nonpartisan facts and a bipartisan solution. I think it is 
important that we all engage in this debate to find a solution that 
benefits every single generation.
  He talked about the Social Security trust fund. In his words, the 
trust fund has no economic value. He called it an accounting device. 
One of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance 
sheets and income statements are fiction, and cash flow is reality. 
That is a challenge that we face is in the short term we have a cash 
flow problem. In the medium and long term, we have a solvency problem, 
and that is what we are talking about and that is what we have to 
solve.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Madam Speaker, sometimes I use the analogy of the 
American family. Adults in that family come home from work, and from 
every single paycheck if they put $100 in a cookie jar for their 
children's college education, and then they borrow to buy a car, buy 
clothes, go on vacation, whatever they used it for, when the child is 
18, they would have a cookie jar full of IOUs. And there is still the 
bill for the college tuition and no money in the cookie jar. That is 
essentially what has happened.
  Social Security was a pay-as-you-go system. Whatever came in, whether 
it was taken out as part of your payroll tax or part of your income tax 
or part of your FICA, it went into the general treasury. Those dollars 
paid old age benefits and paid for services that the government 
provided.
  So none of the dollars have been saved. Maybe many of us wish, 
especially those of us about to retire, wish this was not a tough or 
impending crisis, wish back when it was established in 1945 and 
subsequently that they had truly put the money aside in a trust fund 
and it had been earning interest. But that was not done back then and 
it has not been done, and so we need to wrestle with the facts.
  We have some good ideas. We have some ideas that will make this a 
good system that will be there for our children. We know it will be 
there for our moms and dads. My mom is 82. Obviously, I want to make 
sure that everything is fine for her. And I want to make sure that for 
those about to retire, the trust they have had in the system that they 
be reassured that their benefits are secure.

                              {time}  2350

  But when we talk about it as a crisis, I will use another analogy and 
say it is like jumping off an 80-story building. As you pass the 40th 
floor, you can say, well, nothing bad has happened yet, but clearly 
intervention is needed. And intervention is needed today in Social 
Security.

[[Page H1613]]

  Mr. CHOCOLA. I do think facts are very important in this debate. We 
need to focus on the facts because the facts are what is going to lead 
us to a solution. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side of the 
aisle really do not offer any solutions. They just criticize principles 
that the President has offered and others have offered. They call some 
of these principles a risky scheme. They say that we are putting Social 
Security at risk. But the reality is the riskiest thing we can do is 
nothing. The riskiest thing we can do is ignore this problem and pass 
it on to future generations and really suffer, I think, very negative 
consequences.
  These are certain things we know. We know that the system cannot pay 
the benefits that are promised. If we do nothing, we know that there 
will be a benefit cut to future retirees of about 27 percent. We know 
that we have a $10.4 trillion unfunded liability. That is in present 
dollars. That is, if we had $10.4 trillion, and that is with a T, in 
the bank today earning interest that we could fund the unfunded 
liabilities. If we had to pay every year, it is something like $27 
trillion that we have in unfunded liability. Just to put that in 
perspective, the current national debt is just over $7 trillion. So the 
unfunded liability that we know that we have to face in the future is 
four times the size of the national debt today. People say, well, if we 
would find a solution that would require us to make transition 
financing or transition costs, that might be $1 trillion or $2 
trillion. The reality is that is not additional debt. If the Federal 
Government accounted like every business in America, and I will not get 
in the weeds here and talk about accrual accounting, but if the Federal 
Government recognized its unfunded liabilities like every business 
does, we would already have that on the books. It would already be part 
of our national debt. So finding a way to move some of these costs up 
is not additional debt, it simply, as the gentlewoman from Tennessee 
said, is prepaying our mortgage. It is finding a way to spend money now 
to reduce our real costs in the future and preserve the system, make it 
stronger and make sure it is here for every generation.
  It has been one of the greatest programs in our Nation's history. It 
has served our seniors well. We need to make sure that the system is 
there to continue to serve future generations just as well as it is 
serving our seniors today.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. It is amazing that people talk about this being a risky 
solution when, in fact, the riskiest thing we could do is to do 
nothing. The fact is that as we wait, each year it grows worse. In 
fact, right now because Social Security is bringing in a surplus, we 
still have a few years left where we could use those dollars to help 
fund a transition. For every year we wait, we lose one of these years 
that we are in surplus and we pick up at the other end of the 75-year 
spectrum that we are looking at, a year where we have $600 billion of 
additional unfunded liability. So we not only give a year of transition 
up, we gain a year where we have huge, impossible-to-meet deficits and 
unfunded liabilities.
  I came to the House 8 years ago. There has not ever been a leader in 
the White House and certainly resolving this problem is going to take 
all the leadership potential that we have in this country and we need 
the White House. There has never been a leader in the White House that 
was willing to roll up their sleeves and to say, Let's work our way 
through this, let's bring everybody to the table, let's put all the 
ideas on the table and certainly a solution is going to take multiple 
ideas and maybe more than just one idea, personalized accounts or 
whatever. But if we had done this right when I first came to Congress 
back in 1996, before I understood how serious and how quickly the 
situation was deteriorating for future generations, I think if we had 
addressed the problem then, we would have gotten 8 more years of 
surpluses and certainly those surpluses before we had the war on 
terror, before we had some of the other challenges, and we would not be 
where we are today if we had addressed those. And so to wait even one 
more year is going to make the situation more costly, more difficult, 
we are going to lose a year of surplus that could help finance this 
transition. That looks like a crisis to me.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. I think it is certainly a crisis depending on your time 
frame and certainly our seniors today are fine, those about to retire 
are fine, but those retiring in the future will face this crisis if we 
do not act now. Those that say that there is no problem, that there is 
no need to act until the year 2042 when the trust fund is exhausted 
really need to answer the question, how are they going to pay the 
benefits? If they would come to the floor or they would offer their 
solution by saying, well, if we raise payroll taxes by 50 percent, 
maybe we could address this crisis and they may be right. But the 
reality is that more Americans pay payroll taxes than they do income 
taxes. When you want less of something, increase taxes on it. When you 
increase taxes on jobs, it would be devastating to our economy, it 
would be devastating to many low- and middle-income families.
  I think it is critical that we find a package of good ideas, and 
personal accounts may be one of those good ideas, but the people that 
want to raise taxes have to, I think, face up to the devastating 
effects that they would have on our economy and our families and they 
also have to face up to the fact that we have already raised taxes 
since Social Security was put into place 22 times. Each one of those 
times it did not solve the problem. If you add in when we raised the 
cap on earnings, which is currently $90,000, the total goes up to 39 
times. And so it is critical that we find this package of good ideas 
that not only solves the problem today but permanently solves the 
problem so future Members of this body do not have to come down and 
engage in this debate and say why we failed to act and did not live up 
to our responsibility as elected officials.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. We know that we could not possibly tax our way out of 
these problems, we could not raise taxes enough and have a viable 
economy left if we tried to solve the Social Security problem with tax 
increases. We can look across the ocean to economies, for example, 
France where they did not address the Social Security problem, the 
Social Security challenge that they have there and because now the cost 
of those senior survivor benefits are so high in France, their economy 
is crumbling under the weight of those costs. In fact, no matter what 
solution we have, we depend on growth in this economy to fund the 
transition. And so we have to have two things. We have to have a plan 
to save and strengthen Social Security for our children. It is safe for 
today's seniors but for our children, to make it safe and secure and 
solvent for them, and we need a growing economy so that they can have 
those good jobs, so that they can build the personal accounts while 
they meet the Social Security needs for those that were in the 
workforce before them. And so growth and a new plan to enhance the 
Social Security for future generations are both needed. We cannot trade 
a growing economy in order to strengthen Social Security, because 
raising taxes would have a chilling effect on our economy and at the 
same time it would only be a very short-term fix.
  I think these conversations, conversations with the American people, 
conversations with our constituents when we go back home and 
conversations between each other are helping us grow to better 
understand, better analyze the problem and to put forth good ideas. I 
am excited about the ideas that are being put forth. They are not scary 
to me. They are exciting.
  I yield to the gentleman from Indiana to share with us his closing 
thoughts.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Again I would like to thank the gentlewoman for her 
courageous leadership on this, willing to take the risk of leadership 
to solve important problems for our Nation. I, too, hear when I am at 
home doing town hall meetings, why do we not put the money aside, why 
do we not spend it on general fund items like Congress has been doing 
for 60 years now. There is a mechanism to make sure that the money can 
only be used for Social Security benefits. That mechanism is called 
personal accounts. When you allow people to set aside part of their 
payroll taxes into a personal account, that they have some discretion 
on how that money is invested in a very safe and secure investment. 
That money is theirs. It cannot be used for any other

[[Page H1614]]

purpose and it is going back to a term that has been used in the past, 
a personal lockbox for every individual.
  Again, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership. This is a debate 
that will be ongoing and one that is critical to the future of our 
Nation.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________