[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3434]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

  (Ms. STABENOW asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support a Democratic 
administration that has brought us from very large deficits to large 
surpluses and to say that the next step is to protect Social Security 
and Medicare and pay back the Social Security Trust Fund. We are not 
really out of debt until we do that.
  Mr. Speaker, if we cannot pay off the national debt when we have a 
surplus, when will we do it?
  Never.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a test of the current Congress. Are we going to 
continue fiscal responsibility or go back to the spending and the 
deficits of the 1980s?
  I stand to support Social Security, Medicare and paying off the debt. 
If we do that, we put real dollars back into people's pockets by 
lowering interest rates, which means our mortgages, our credit cards, 
our car payments go down.
  Mr. Chairman, we need to bring down the debt and protect Social 
Security and Medicare for future generations, and I call on my 
colleagues to join us in doing that.

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