[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2882]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              DIFFERENCE OF OPINION ON RETIREMENT SECURITY

  (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a fundamental 
difference of opinion between the Democrats and the Republicans on the 
issue of retirement security.
  Just this past weekend a distinguished Member of the other body 
mentioned repeatedly that his father would not have known how to invest 
for his own retirement. He needed the government to do it for him. That 
same government that every few years tells us proudly they have fixed 
Social Security, only to discover that it is going bankrupt again.
  Mr. Speaker, the approximately 43 million Americans who own a mutual 
fund or retirement money invested in the stock market must really think 
that liberal Democrats take the Americans for fools. Or they might be 
laughing their way to the bank at the silliness of all these 
Washington-knows-best liberals who have so little faith in the ability 
of grown-ups to manage their own affairs that they are scandalized by 
the very idea that the average American ought to take advantage of the 
market prosperity, too.
  While the liberal elites get rich and talk about their 401(k) plans 
at cocktail parties, they would deny the same opportunity to ordinary 
Americans who have to rely on a retirement system that has gone 
bankrupt. What arrogance.

                          ____________________