[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 66 (Wednesday, May 18, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3550-H3551]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM ON OUR YOUTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
talk before the House tonight, and I want to talk about an issue that 
has been discussed for a number of weeks and months, something that is 
of vital importance, I think, to all Americans, and that is the issue 
of Social Security and what do we do about it.
  Now, the problem with Social Security, as everybody knows, is that it 
is a pay-as-you-go-system, which means that today's workers pay for 
today's retirees. It worked relatively well for a period of time. In 
1950, there were 16 workers for every retiree, now there are 3.3 
workers for every retiree, and in just a few short years there will be 
2 workers for every retiree. So the demographics, the aging of our 
society dictate that we do something.
  A lot of the talk has been about how does it affect seniors in our 
Nation. But I suggest to my colleagues that regardless of when you 
believe the problem or the situation or the crisis begins, or who you 
believe it affects, we cannot dispute this one fact, and that is that 
those most affected by it, regardless of when it happens or what 
happens, are the young people of this Nation. So I believe it is 
important for us to discuss and debate Social Security reform and how 
it will affect all sectors of our society, but we must, we must make 
certain that we talk about how it will affect young folks.
  Now, in my district, what I did to try to listen to the young people 
of our Nation was to get together what is called a Youth Summit, and I 
set up a meeting with about 95 or 100 high school juniors and seniors 
in my district from all different schools, including Woodstock High 
School, Harrison, Kell, Lassiter, Etowah, Marietta High School, North 
Cobb, Pope, Sprayberry, Walton, Blessed Trinity, Centennial, Milton, 
North Spring, Riverwood, Roswell, and The Cottage School and Alpharetta 
High School, about 100 high schools, and sent them a bunch of material 
beforehand so they knew what we were talking about. The funny thing was 
a lot of them had great information about it before.
  We gathered together for about 4 hours one morning and we talked 
about Social Security, and I challenged them to come up with some 
solutions and answer some questions. But when I started, I brought out 
this Social Security statement. This is a real Social Security 
statement, it came from the Social Security Administration, and this is 
what all of us get when we open up our mail from the Social Security 
Administration. It says, ``Unless action is taken soon to strengthen 
Social Security, in just 14 years we will begin paying more in benefits 
than we collect in taxes.'' That was how we started as the premise.
  I was extremely impressed by the knowledge and the intelligence of 
these young folks. We broke into different groups and assigned them 
questions. Now, they could take any question that they wanted, but we 
kind of prompted a few. We talked about discussing the benefits or the 
distractions or problems with personal accounts, and we asked them to 
answer the question: what is the best way to fix Social Security and, 
even the more fundamental question, do you believe that Social Security 
needs to be fixed, and asked them to talk about how personal retirement 
accounts, voluntary accounts have worked in other countries.
  Then we got back together after they had worked for a period of time 
on those questions, and asked each of those groups to present their 
findings. It really was fascinating, but there was one common theme. 
There was a common theme to all of their conclusions, and that was that 
there is a major problem, every one of them believed

[[Page H3551]]

that. There was not a single soul who said that we ought not to 
anything, and that that problem ought to be addressed, and that it is 
the responsibility, obviously, of Congress to get it done. There were a 
couple of tongue in cheek suggestions about what we ought to do with 
folks over 65, but those were purely for humorous effect at the 
meeting.
  There was the common theme that we needed to fix it, and all of their 
suggestions had merit, but some of them I would like to point out. They 
talked extensively about personal retirement accounts, talking about 
putting more money in personal retirement accounts when they are 
younger because they would have a greater opportunity to increase; some 
of them thought we ought to increase the age of retirement but, when 
they get closer to that, I suspect they will not believe that. They 
spoke about not increasing the 12.4 percent tax. There was an 
interesting conclusion or recommendation that education on retirement 
plans ought to be mandatory in high school. Education on retirement 
plans ought to be mandatory in order to graduate from high school, they 
said. I thought that was an interesting item; probably something that 
we ought to take up. Then one final point that they made, and that was 
that people ought not rely on just Social Security for their main 
source of income in their retirement years.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, we tend to get distracted here. We talk about 
different ages, we talk about those over 55, and I think it is 
important for everybody to appreciate that those over 55 will not be 
affected at all. Those youngest individuals in our society will be 
those most affected.
  I challenge our colleagues to follow the lead of the high school 
students in my district who said, get down to business, put politics 
aside, and do not wait. That is good advice from those individuals who 
are most affected by whatever changes we bring about.

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