[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           THIS YEAR'S AGENDA

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, in this coming session--which is going to 
be relatively short, as it always is on election years, but 
particularly this year--we have to focus if we intend to accomplish 
things. I hope we do. As is often the case in election years, there are 
times when people are more interested in creating the issue than they 
are in resolving the issue. I think we will see a considerable amount 
of that, of course, going out towards the Presidential election and 
trying to find the issues the party will be for--which is all part of 
the system. But I am hopeful we can concentrate and focus on the issues 
that we think are most important.
  We have had some experience, unfortunately in the last several weeks, 
and certainly even last year, that quite often the minority chose to 
bring up issues they knew would not be resolved but brought them up 
continuously to diffuse the issues on which we have been working. In 
this body, that is easy. One person very readily can hold up things, 
unless we can get 60 votes to do something different.
  In any event, I am hopeful that will not be the case. We are going to 
focus on some things that we have decided upon. This will be more 
refined as time goes on, but certainly education will be one. The issue 
of education, of course, is not whether we try to improve it, but how 
we fund those improvements. I do not believe that we should have one-
size-fits-all regulations that come from some bureaucracy in 
Washington. We should distribute our education funding in a manner that 
allows the States and local school boards to make those decisions.
  Certainly the needs in Pinedale, WY, are going to be different than 
in Philadelphia. That is as it should be. We need to allow for this 
type of flexibility.
  Another area that we will be focusing on is health care. We did some 
work last year on strengthening Medicare, doing something particularly 
in rural areas so outpatient care can be better financed. We intend to 
continue to do that, at the same time doing whatever is necessary to 
ensure Medicare continues to provide the benefits it is designed to 
provide.
  Certainly one of the issues that will be difficult and controversial, 
yet I think most people want to do something about, is providing the 
opportunity for everyone to have pharmaceuticals available if they 
cannot afford them; hopefully to protect the programs we have now, to 
encourage and in fact assist people who now get their own 
supplementals, but be able to help those people who are not able to do 
that.
  Social Security will continue to be an area of great concern. We have 
made some progress in not spending Social Security money in the 
operational budget. However, that is not all that is necessary. If the 
young people who will start making Social Security payments at their 
first job can expect some benefits 30, 40, 50 years from now, then 
things will have to be done differently. Obviously, we have 
alternatives. We can increase taxes--but not many people are for that. 
Social Security payments are one of the highest taxes many people pay 
in the United States. We could reduce benefits--again, there is not 
much support for that. Or we could, indeed, increase the return on the 
money that is in a trust. We think that is an excellent idea, to 
provide individual accounts so at least a portion of the money that is 
in the fund would belong to you and belong to me. I suspect people over 
50 or so would not see any difference, but younger people would have an 
account that would be theirs and, indeed, could be invested in equities 
for a much better return.
  So, along with reducing the debt, those are some of the things, with 
which we will be involved.

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