[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 20667]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  (Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of Americans 
listened to the debate last night. A lot of us have been working on 
Social Security for a long time, certainly our Speaker pro tempore, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw), myself, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), and many others 
have been looking at ways to keep this most important program 
continuing to be solvent. A lot of people depend on it.
  I was very upset last night with some of the comments on Social 
Security. The Vice President has got a plan that I think does not solve 
the huge problem of keeping Social Security solvent.
  Let me just go through this chart briefly. The biggest risk is doing 
nothing at all. Social Security has a total unfunded liability of over 
$20 trillion. The Social Security Trust Fund contains nothing but IOUs. 
That is what the Vice President is suggesting, that we add another 
giant IOU and somehow come up with the money. How are we going to come 
up with the money?
  The last point. To keep paying program Social Security benefits, the 
payroll tax will have to be increased to at least 50 percent of total 
income; 50 percent of total income for our FICA taxes or benefits will 
have to be cut by one-third.
  We cannot continue to go on doing nothing. We have to make some 
program changes if we are going to keep this important program solvent.

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