[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 27858]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



REPUBLICAN BUDGET BILL DOES NOTHING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY OR MEDICARE AND 
                           HURTS EVERY FAMILY

  (Ms. DeLAURO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, the Republican leadership's budget bill 
does not extend the life of Social Security even by one single day, it 
fails to provide one penny for Medicare prescription drug benefits, 
and, frankly, the only thing it does do is to hurt American families, 
every American family, in a very, very real way.
  As one of my colleagues earlier said, if it were not so tragic it 
would be laughable to hear the Republican leadership on the other side 
of the aisle talk about their allegiance and their heartfelt sympathy 
about Social Security and their desire to want to save Social Security. 
However, their majority leader, in 1984, called Social Security ``a bad 
retirement, a rotten trick on the American people,'' and I quote, ``I 
think we are going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and 
phase it out over a period of time.''
  He said that in 1984. Now let us fast-forward to 1994. On a C-SPAN 
call-in show he was asked, ``Are you going to take the pledge? Are you 
going to promise not to cut people's Social Security to meet your 
promises? No, I am not going to make such a promise. I would never have 
created Social Security.''

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