[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 11, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E938-E940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING A RECENT SPEECH BY REPRESENTATIVE ROSA DeLAURO AT 
                         GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN D. DINGELL

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 11, 2005

  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the recent speech 
that my good friend and colleague from Connecticut, Congresswoman Rosa 
DeLauro, gave at Georgetown University on April 19, 2005. 
Representative DeLauro plainly and passionately conveyed her opposition 
to privatizing Social Security. Moreover, Representative DeLauro 
clearly lays out how the values instilled in her by both her parents 
and the Catholic Church led to her opposition to privatizing this 
vitally important program that has kept millions of seniors out of 
poverty since it was signed into law in 1935. I applaud the 
Congresswoman's ability to connect her faith with her public service.
  I would like to take this opportunity to insert Congresswoman 
DeLauro's speech into the Record and would encourage all my colleagues 
to take a few moments to read it.

       It is always good to be here at Georgetown among friends--
     so many good, young Democrats engaged in the process, 
     fighting for change, who understand the stakes of today's 
     political debates and want to take part in them. As the 
     future of the country, no one has more riding on them than 
     you. You know better than anyone that their outcomes will 
     determine the course of this country for decades to come.
       And as College Democrats, you are committed to the values 
     of our Party. Not only are you working to elect Democratic 
     candidates, perhaps more importantly, you are encouraging 
     involvement and building excitement within the Party, 
     providing your peers with the skills and experiences 
     necessary to reinvigorate the Party from the grassroots. That 
     is something very precious--and so important right now.
       Tonight, I wanted to discuss the values that not only unite 
     us Democrats but as Americans--particularly as to how they 
     have shaped and informed the Social Security program over the 
     years. Indeed, we hear so much about the importance of values 
     today--but oddly enough, little about what they are, where 
     they come from and what their implications are in government 
     and society. And so tonight, I would like to speak about that 
     nexus between values and public policy, a little about how my 
     values shaped my own views and led me into public life, and 
     how in the Social Security system we find a true reflection 
     of those values in the pursuit of the common good.
       We can all agree that values encompass so much more than 
     the cultural flashpoints with which they are often associated 
     in the media today. Values should not be reduced to one or 
     two political issues. Rather, they are so much broader than 
     that--the guiding principles on which we conduct our lives. 
     Given to us by our parents and to them by their parents, 
     one's values are what give life meaning. They ground us and 
     provide the ethical framework within which we conduct our 
     lives and raise our families.
       Mine were given to me by my parents, who came to this 
     country as Italian immigrants. In our household, I was 
     constantly reminded of the value of working hard to get ahead 
     and giving back to a country that had given so much to us. My 
     father, who dropped out of school in the seventh grade, 
     largely because students made fun of his broken English, 
     went on to become a proud veteran of this country--he 
     served his community. He sat on New Haven's City Council, 
     as did my mother, who served there for 35 years--well into 
     her 80's.
       Working in a sweatshop sewing collars for pennies before 
     going on to a life of public service, my mother was a driving 
     force in my life and career. But to be sure, faith played a 
     large role in shaping my values as well, having attended 
     Catholic school from elementary school to college. It was 
     there that I learned to nourish my mind and my heart--to 
     reach out, to work hard, to fulfill my potential and be 
     whatever I wanted to be. But it also taught me about right 
     and wrong, personal responsibility and how to nourish my 
     community, my neighbors--to give something back to my world, 
     to the people of that world.
       In a broader sense, it was the church that bound us 
     together as a community in my neighborhood--in our schools, 
     in our hospitals. My father received communion daily--and 
     lived his faith with commitment. Our local parish and our 
     kitchen table were our community center--where people 
     gathered to share their lives and help one another. Every 
     night around my family's kitchen table, I saw how faith could 
     serve as the nexus between family and community. There, I 
     would witness firsthand how my parents helped solve the 
     problems of people in our neighborhood.
       With my parents' example and my Catholic upbringing, I 
     learned the vital connection between family, faith, 
     responsibility, community, and working for the common good--
     that values learned at home and at church effected change at 
     the community level both profound and undeniable. It showed 
     me that government can and must play a critical role in 
     helping people make the most of their own abilities and how 
     to meet their responsibilities to each other and society as a 
     whole.
       My own story is hardly unique. Many of these values have 
     helped shape America's public policy over the course of our 
     nation's history. Indeed, many of the economic and social 
     achievements of the past century have their roots in this 
     vision of opportunity and responsibility, community, a 
     recognition of our obligations to each other--including 
     Medicaid, Head Start, the child tax credit, and the GI Bill, 
     to name but a few.
       Perhaps the ultimate legislative expression of our nation's 
     shared values and those I learned growing up is Social 
     Security, which for 7 decades now has tied generation to 
     generation, ensuring that those seniors have a secure 
     retirement after a lifetime of work. Social Security was born 
     in part out of

[[Page E939]]

     FDR's appreciation for Catholic Social Teaching and Monsignor 
     John Ryan's role in advocating programs based on the social 
     letters of Pope Pius the Eleventh and particularly Pope Leo 
     the Thirteenth's Rerum Novarum, which read, ``Among the 
     several purposes of a society, one should try to arrange for 
     . . . a fund out of which the members may be effectually 
     helped in their needs, not only in the cases of accident, but 
     also in sickness, old age, and distress.'' In that respect, 
     Social Security was the embodiment of those teachings--a 
     declaration that our human rights are realized in community.
       Such sentiments were reflected in FDR's words to the 
     Congress in 1934, when he said, ``We are compelled to employ 
     the active interest of the Nation as a whole through 
     government in order to encourage a greater security for each 
     individual who composes it.''
       For FDR, Social Security was one way we could promote and 
     maintain our shared values by rewarding work and ensuring a 
     decent retirement for those who have worked a lifetime. And 
     by depending on and encouraging younger generations to take 
     responsibility, too, Social Security reinforced the idea that 
     in America, we do not leave every man or woman to fend for 
     himself or herself--that we do not tolerate the 
     impoverishment of our senior population. Those are our 
     nation's values and they are perpetuated by the very 
     construct of our Social Security program.
       Indeed, with the first Social Security check issued, 
     poverty among the elderly began to drop. In the 1950s, more 
     than 30 percent of elderly Americans lived out their last 
     years in poverty--today that figure is about 10 percent, with 
     2 out of 3 seniors today relying on Social Security as the 
     prime source of their monthly income, including three-
     quarters of all elderly women.
       And Social Security is not just for people like our parents 
     and grandparents--a third of the 47 million people who rely 
     on the program are the disabled, widows and children. All 
     told, that is 47 million people--parents, grandparents, 
     widows and children--who do not have to rely solely on their 
     families for financial support because they have the help of 
     Social Security.
       For women who on average earn less and spend less time in 
     the workforce, Social Security is a blessing. Women comprise 
     nearly 60 percent of all seniors on Social Security--a 
     majority of whom would be living in poverty without it. More 
     than half of all women receiving benefits do so as the spouse 
     of a retired worker, but for 4 in 10 women living on their 
     own, the program accounts for 90 percent of their retirement 
     income.
       So essentially, Social Security functions not only as a 
     safety net for older Americans, but in a way, for the rest of 
     us--a kind of family insurance guaranteeing that we can live 
     our own lives and raise our own children, confident that our 
     parents and loved ones have something to rely on and can live 
     independently of us. It is without a doubt the most 
     successful, efficient middle-class retirement program we 
     have--a ``national achievement'' that we can be proud of as 
     individuals and as members of a good and decent society.
       Yet today, the commitment to opportunity and community out 
     of which Social Security was created has frayed. For sure, a 
     coarseness to our culture today in our politics and in the 
     media has deepened divisions in society. But I think it goes 
     deeper than that. Today, pleas for community and the common 
     good have taken a backseat to appeals to self-interest, 
     sometimes greed, and extreme individualism--policies that 
     make us more unequal and divided. And where government was 
     once seen as a vehicle for our shared values, today it is 
     often viewed with suspicion and mistrust.
       Indeed, no debate is more symbolic of the forces at play in 
     today's society than the one surrounding the future of Social 
     Security. Despite the program's unqualified success, the 
     president wants to change it. The reason he gives is that in 
     2018, benefits being paid out begin to exceed what Social 
     Security is taking in in payroll taxes, even though Social 
     Security will be able to pay 100 percent of benefits until 
     2041. Even after 2041, the Social Security Trust Fund does 
     not go bankrupt, because the program will still be able to 
     pay between 70 and 80 percent of its benefits.
       Congress must address the funding shortfall in the middle 
     of the century. Yet what President Bush is proposing is that 
     we radically change this successful program--privatizing 
     Social Security by diverting a third of payroll taxes that 
     pay benefits today into private, individual accounts that can 
     be invested in the stock market.
       I think the Catholic Bishops had it right, when they wrote 
     extensively on this issue at the end of the 1990's as 
     Republicans were advocating for Social Security's 
     privatization. The Bishops said then that Social Security had 
     been established as an insurance program in which, quote, 
     ``society as a whole buffers the individual and collective 
     risks that workers and their families face.'' They went on to 
     say that turning Social Security into an investment vehicle 
     for individuals, quote, ``does not guarantee an adequate or 
     assured retirement program'' for our senior population.
       But that is precisely what President Bush wants to do. He 
     wants turn Social Security into an investment program--a tool 
     to create personal wealth. And I fail to see how a program 
     benefiting our national community, rooted in values that 
     promote the common good and reinforce the idea that we are 
     all in this together, is improved by private accounts. These 
     values go to the heart of what I believe as a Democrat and as 
     a Catholic.
       Besides, privatization does nothing to address the expected 
     shortfall in the current Social Security system--the reason 
     President Bush brought up privatization in the first place. 
     In fact, by taking money out of the trust fund to create 
     private accounts, the president's proposal makes the problem 
     worse. Secondly, privatization will balloon our half-trillion 
     dollar deficit by as much as $5 trillion in the next 20 years 
     because we will still have to pay benefits to current 
     retirees at the same time we are taking money out of the 
     system to create private accounts. That means higher interest 
     rates for buying a house, a car or going back to school.
       Third, we would be eliminating the program's guaranteed 
     benefit and requiring benefit cuts that the Administration 
     itself has estimated will be as steep as 40 percent--all for 
     a plan that does not even address the underlying problem. The 
     amount retirees get from Social Security is already modest--
     about $955 per month, $11,500 per year, enough to pay for 
     most basic needs, but hardly enough to get by on alone.
       And for women, for whom Social Security has been such a 
     success, the effects of privatization would be disastrous, as 
     confirmed by a recent report by the National Women's Law 
     Center. For 29 percent of women, Social Security is the only 
     retirement package available. Privatization would replace the 
     program's progressive benefit structure with private accounts 
     based only on a worker's contributions to the account--
     cutting the average widow's benefit in my state of 
     Connecticut to a paltry $518 per month.
       And privatization is not only a bad deal for our mothers 
     and grandmothers--but for young women as well. For all our 
     gains, women still earn less--77 cents for every dollar men 
     earn--even though we live longer. And the Social Security 
     Administration itself predicts that 65 years from now, 40 
     percent of married women will still receive benefits based on 
     their husband's higher earnings record.
       You might be asking--but what about the increased benefits 
     from the stock market? Well, you do not get to keep the full 
     Social Security and the full private account. The 
     average private account would be taxed at 70 percent 
     through monthly deductions from your Social Security 
     check. This privatization tax would come on top of the 
     benefit cuts that will affect all Social Security 
     beneficiaries.
       It is complicated, but when you retire, you essentially 
     have to pay the money you put into your private account back 
     to the government. So, at the same time that the private 
     accounts would be adding to your income, a large portion of 
     that additional income would be offset dollar for dollar 
     through reductions in your guaranteed Social Security check. 
     And that would be regardless of how well your private account 
     performed.
       But well beyond the financial implications of 
     privatization--and there are many--are its moral 
     implications. As The National Catholic Reporter editorialized 
     recently, what we risk losing with privatization is so much 
     more than money. We risk losing the agreement that we have 
     maintained for the past half-century that we are all in this 
     together. We risk losing faith with the understanding that 
     all workers--poorest to richest--contribute to something in 
     common and that everyone gets something in return. And we 
     abandon the sense that despite differences in political 
     outlook and social standing, we all believe that is good for 
     society to guarantee a minimum standard of economy security 
     for its oldest, disabled and widowed citizens. That is what 
     privatization risks.
       As someone who has had the privilege of serving in the 
     Congress of the United States for over a decade-and-a-half, 
     representing more than a half-million people, I believe that 
     government has an obligation to play a role in making 
     opportunity real--a moral obligation. I do not believe in 
     every man or woman for himself or herself. I believe in 
     values like shared responsibility and personal 
     responsibility. I believe in what we can achieve together. 
     Those are the principles at the core of Social Security. They 
     are what drive me--they are what drive you. They are what 
     drive each of us as Democrats and Americans.
       The fight to preserve Social Security and make it as 
     successful in the 21st Century as it was in the last is a 
     struggle that every American has a stake in--but no one more 
     than the younger generation. This is a defining challenge for 
     us--a statement about the kind of country we want America to 
     be. As Franklin Roosevelt told Congress, Social Security is a 
     ``return to values lost in the course of our economic 
     development and expansion.''
       That is our challenge today, as well--to bring change, 
     while affirming our values as Americans and as Democrats. 
     Indeed, in 1983, bankruptcy was only a year off--one year, 
     not 37. Back then, Congress and President Reagan worked 
     together on a bipartisan commission that ensured Social 
     Security would be solvent for generations. And they did it 
     not by changing the fundamental nature of the program but by 
     making minor adjustments to the benefits and financing 
     structures.
       In my view, that is the example of bipartisanship we should 
     draw upon. With so much at stake for our communities and the 
     country, I believe we need that kind of bipartisanship in 
     this debate--one that achieves consensus, strengthens the 
     program's guaranteed benefit in retirement and reflects our 
     nation's shared values. Because this fight is

[[Page E940]]

     not only about stopping the bad idea that is privatization--
     it is about promoting and maintaining the good idea that was 
     and is Social Security.
       As students looking forward to lives of your own, raising 
     families and embarking on careers, you have been given a 
     remarkable opportunity--to put the values your parents 
     instilled in you to use in society, in whatever career you 
     choose.
       My challenge to you today is: how are you going to seize 
     this opportunity--to give back and have a say in this debate 
     which is so important to our shared values? What role will 
     you play in ensuring future generations have the quality of 
     life you and your families have had? I do not pretend to have 
     all the answers. But if my own experiences have taught me 
     anything, it is that bringing our values to the public sphere 
     is not a matter of expediency but of moral and civic 
     obligation--a call I hope each of you choose to answer.
       Thank you for this honor and this opportunity.

                          ____________________