[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 23879-23883]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, my colleague from North Dakota has just 
left the floor. I was off the floor for a few moments, but I know he 
talked about the Presidential campaign and the proposal by the Governor 
from Texas to reform Social Security, especially for the young people 
of our country as it relates to their future participation in it and 
the amount of money they will ultimately pay into it versus that which 
they get out.
  I thought I would come to the floor for a few moments to share with 
the Senate several experiences I have had over the last couple of years 
dealing with Social Security. About a year ago, I did a series of town 
meetings across my State called senior-to-senior. I invited high school 
seniors and senior citizens to come together in the same place to talk 
about Social Security.
  Every time you go to a high school, one of the top two or three 
questions asked is about Social Security. Now, my guess is that the 
average American would not believe a senior in high school would be 
that interested in Social Security. But they have probably heard their 
mom or dad saying you really ought to not plan on Social Security; it 
is certainly not going to be there when you get to be your 
grandparents' age. That has been a fairly

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standard refrain across America for the last decade. Why? Why would 
parents of today suggest to their young people not to expect to get a 
Social Security benefit? Largely because they have been told it would 
go bankrupt, that it would create so much liability that it could never 
pay for itself.
  What I think they failed to recognize is that since the Social 
Security reforms of the mid-1980s, Social Security has been building a 
reserve trust fund and we are taking in more than we are paying out. 
But sometime in the near future--sometime in the future of the Senator 
from Idaho and the Senator from North Dakota--when we get to be Social 
Security age along with other baby boomers, there is going to be a peak 
of Social Security liability, or Social Security obligation. It will be 
some $7 trillion-plus. That is a fact. We know that.
  But we also know that the seniors of today and immediately tomorrow, 
at least for the next decade or two, are well protected because of the 
reforms we made in that system in the mid-1980s and the very dramatic 
tax increases that workers and employers have paid since that time. 
Social Security is strong today. But we didn't do it by cutting 
benefits very much, we did it by dramatically raising taxes on the 
working men and women of this country.
  If you want to keep this cycle up, if you do not want to make it 
self-supporting, and if you do not want it to yield what the other 
annuities and private annuities are yielding, then you keep it up and 
you say to the young people: You are going to pay in hundreds of 
thousands of dollars of your wages in taxes, and for every dollar you 
put in during your lifetime, you are going to get only three quarters 
back.
  Is that being very honest with the young people of America today? 
They are going to work all of their lives and put all of their money 
in, and they are going to be taxed at an even higher rate. And in 
return, even the likelihood of getting back a 5-, 4-, or 3-percent 
return just isn't going to be there.
  Yet you can say to them: If you invest in private investment funds, 
the average return over the last 100 years invested in the industry of 
this country is about a 10-percent analyzed rate.
  Young people aren't dumb. They are pretty darned bright. With today's 
Internet and their ability to calculate, to communicate, and to invest 
independently, they pretty well understand that what their parents are 
telling them has some truth, makes some sense.
  Social Security may be there. But it is not a very good investment 
unless you are paying for your parents' retirement--or, should I say 
``enhanced income,'' because your parents paid for your grandparents. 
The only problem is that every senior in high school today can expect a 
20-percent increase in their taxes over what their parents are paying 
today, when they get to be their parents' age, to fund the current 
Social Security system.
  That is why Social Security has become a debate issue in this 
Presidential campaign. And it darned well should be. No responsible 
Presidential candidate is going to stand out there and say all is well. 
It is well for the immediate future--for the next decade or two. But 
for young people today to invest in this system without significant 
reform in it is not only bad policy, it is bad politics.
  But I hope we reside on the side of good policy and ultimately good 
politics. It tends to go hand in hand.
  It has been fascinating for me to watch the debate between Governor 
Bush and Vice President Gore, with Gore saying Bush is going to 
bankrupt Social Security and Bush suggesting that what Gore might do 
would simply increase the system's liability and increase the debt 
burden on future citizens. Where does the balance lie?
  I really believe it is time for this Senate and this Government to 
investigate the opportunity to take a small piece of Social Security 
taxes and allow taxpayers to invest them in what we call personal 
savings accounts.
  I always notice when the Senator from North Dakota or others talk 
about this issue, they only talk about investments in the stock market. 
But that is not Governor Bush's proposal. It was Bill Clinton who said 
invest it in the stock market.
  What Governor Bush has consistently said for the last month is 
personal accounts invested somewhat like the Federal retirees have--
like the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Idaho have, 
which means they don't invest their individual accounts in individual 
stocks. They have categories of investment that are high risk, moderate 
risk, and low risk. Yes, some of that money is invested in the stock 
market, because that is where you invest money--you invest it in the 
economy of this country--but some is also invested in private and 
government bonds and other less risky investments.
  We all know the demographics. We will soon have a record number of 
seniors in this country. What we are suggesting is that, as we shift 
back and forth, as older people get older and younger people move into 
the system, that over the next few decades we transform the system; we 
adjust it. Over that period of time, we can create less dependency on 
the American taxpayer and as future retirees--if we adjust it 
properly--increasingly rely on their individualized account. That makes 
awfully good sense.
  Here is what doesn't make good sense to me. When Vice President began 
to talk about his Social Security proposals--increasing benefits for 
widows, and increasing benefits for stay-at-home parents by attributing 
earnings to them while they stay at home--oh, did that sound like good 
politics in an election year. My guess is it is pretty good politics in 
an election year. But the question is, Is it good policy for the Social 
Security system? Does it keep Social Security stable? Does it keep it 
well funded? Or down the road does Mr. Gore--if he becomes President 
and long after he has left--create such a liability that the person who 
will be serving here from Idaho long after I am gone has to say to the 
young people and wage earners of this country that we are either going 
to have to cut your benefits or raise your taxes? My guess is that is 
exactly what is going to happen. Let me for a few moments suggest why.
  Everybody wants to help moms and widows, especially during election 
years. But, Mr. President, let me suggest to you that Social Security 
is the wrong tool for that job.
  The Gore Social Security surplus scheme would fail to provide 
meaningful assistance to the people they are targeting to aid. Worse, 
it would increase the Social Security's unfunded liability by almost a 
third; reduce Social Security trust fund balances by hundreds of 
billions of dollars; and simply accelerate the cash-flow problem in 
which Social Security will find itself in the near decades if we don't 
make reasonable reforms.
  Social Security is one of the few Federal programs that already takes 
stay-at-home parents into account. In the current system, married 
spouses generally receive about the same Social Security benefits 
regardless of whether they worked full time, part time, or took a break 
in child rearing and did not work at all.
  For example, in 1996, women who received Social Security benefits 
based upon their own work record received an average of $675 in 
benefits while women whose benefits were based on their husbands' work 
record received $569. What I am saying is women who stayed at home 
received almost the same benefit.
  Let's remember that Social Security is not designed to be the sole 
source of retirement income. It was designed to be supplemental income, 
and it should be understood to be just that. Nevertheless, for many 
seniors, Social Security is their sole source of income. For those 
seniors, our first priority should be to ensure we don't further 
endanger the program by adding additional obligations on top of the 
ones we already cannot afford.
  If the Vice President wants to help mothers, why didn't he embrace 
the tax relief the Senate Marriage Tax Relief Act would have provided? 
That would have been immediate relief. Instead, his proposal takes a 
program already under financial stress, and it

[[Page 23881]]

would put it, in my estimation, at substantially greater financial 
risk.
  What does it cost? Everybody has seen what the Vice President has 
proposed for Social Security. And yet, while the short-term cost of 
Governor Bush's proposal has been discussed--there has been a trillion 
dollar figure floated around--Nobody wants to talk about what the Vice 
President's plan will cost.
  This is what we believe and this is what others believe the Vice 
President's plan will cost. The Vice President said it would just cost 
a few billion over the next 10 years. While the Social Security 
Administration has not estimated the motherhood proposal, economist 
Henry Aaron offered a seat-of-your-pants estimate in Slate Magazine of 
about 0.25 percent of taxable wages. That is about $150 billion over 
the next 10 years. Meanwhile, Vice President's Gore's proposal to 
increase widow's benefits would constitute about 0.32 percent of 
taxable wages, according to the report of the 1994 through 1996 
Advisory Council on Social Security, Volume 1: ``Findings and 
Recommendations.'' That translated into about $166 billion over the 
next 10 years.
  Now the Vice President has put a limit on his benefits so it would 
cost maybe a little bit less than that. The bottom line is, if you 
spread this concept out over the lifetime of the beneficiary, we truly 
are talking about these proposals costing trillions of dollars. He 
doesn't propose to raise taxes. He proposes a finance scheme which 
simply advances the liability and expands the liability into future 
generations.
  If you are going to raise benefits in Social Security, at least have 
the political integrity to propose a tax increase to offset the 
benefits so you don't stress out the trust funds beyond where they 
currently are and you don't create outyear liabilities.
  But then again, how could you be all things to all people and propose 
this great benefit, if on the backside you looked the worker in the eye 
and said, ``And now you are going to have to pay for it''?
  So, once again, it is a Ponzi scheme. We shift a little around and we 
move a little over here. Now, the Governor from Texas has different 
approach. He clearly recognizes that by setting aside a couple of 
percentage points and allowing them to be invested within a fixed 
universe of investments, that we begin to build for the future of 
Social Security by compounding our investment income instead of 
compounding our liabilities and our debts by adding to the benefit 
structure.
  If we are going to improve the condition of widows and spouses, let's 
do it in a way that is realistic and honest. If we want to use Social 
Security as that vehicle, then at least provide a revenue flow that 
effectively justifies those benefits in the outyears, the several 
hundreds of billions of dollars that ultimately the motherhood proposal 
and the proposal that relates to widow's benefits would cost. That is 
what we ought to be talking about. That is the fair way to do it.
  The amount of new liabilities required under the Vice President's 
proposal is truly staggering. Some economists have suggested it is in 
the trillions of dollars. A trillion here, a trillion there adds up to 
be real money. In the past, those involved in public policy--and, more 
importantly, those involved in the electorial process--said that Social 
Security is off limits unless you are willing to increase benefits. 
Don't talk about new taxes, only add to the benefit structure.
  Thank goodness, a few years ago Congress stopped that. We reformed 
Social Security, and we said we are going to leave it alone.
  As a result, we stabilized it. We made the tough votes in the mid-
1980s. We raised the taxes dramatically on the working men and women of 
this country--but we stabilized the system. So today, I say don't add 
benefits to that system unless you are clearly willing to offset those 
benefits by revenue flows.
  The Governor is talking about an idea, a concept that he would work 
with the Congress of the United States. Recognizing we are in historic 
surpluses at this moment, there is a unique opportunity to reform the 
Social Security system so we can go to the young men and women entering 
the workforce in this country and say, in your lifetime, your Social 
Security annuity will amount to something very significant instead of 
getting back just three quarters for every $1 you pay in.
  For my parents, Social Security has been a tremendous benefit. For 
their parents, it was a windfall. For me, it will be about a break even 
for the amount of money I have invested my lifetime. For my children, 
unless we reform it as the Governor from Texas has proposed, it will be 
one very bad investment. I don't want to ask that of my children. 
Certainly the Senator from North Dakota and I are better thinkers than 
that. We ought to be able to come together to devise a system that 
doesn't create outyear liabilities of the kind the Vice President is 
proposing.
  Those are the real issues. Sure, it is worthy of a Presidential 
debate. That is where it ought to be debated. Clearly, the facts and 
figures ought to be well established. At the same time, I am pleased 
there is a candidate out there who isn't willing to live in the shell 
of the past and the concept of a system that was crafted way back in 
the 1930s, under a Bismarckian plan that simply said it is going to 
work because you will never live out its benefit cycle. Thank goodness 
my parents will live it out. People are living longer.
  Because of the demographics of this country today, it is critically 
important that the Congress develop the political will to reform Social 
Security, to establish personal savings accounts underneath a governing 
body to ensure sound investments and the security of the system. That 
makes good sense to me. And it sounds, by the numbers out there, it is 
making even better sense to Americans.
  I want my children to have a strong Social Security supplemental 
income system for them so they receive a healthy return instead of a 
three quarters for the dollar. That makes good sense. They can do it in 
the private sector. Why aren't we smart enough to design a plan so we 
can do it in the public sector?
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this, I think, is the debate we ought to 
have in this country on the subject of Social Security. I am pleased to 
hear the Senator from Idaho describe the plan proposed by Governor Bush 
and describe the proposal by Vice President Gore on the issue of Social 
Security.
  If you read history, you will find there are people for the last 
nearly 70 years who have predicted that Social Security won't work, 
will go broke, and won't be there when they retire. Decade after 
decade, people predicted that in every community around this country, 
especially the small towns of North Dakota.
  There are people living better lives because the Social Security 
Program provided them something called ``security.'' Does it provide 
for all their needs? No. But it is a bedrock security for their 
retirement years. They invested in it when they were working and now 
they have Social Security in their retirement years. The word 
``security'' in Social Security is not some accident. People understood 
that the purpose of Social security is just that--security. It is the 
economic baseline of retirement, the one means of financial support 
that Americans can count on.
  As I indicated, there are people who, every decade, have said the sky 
is falling with respect to this program. There are some who never 
supported this program in the first place. They wouldn't have supported 
Social Security because philosophically they didn't believe Government 
ought to do anything, and they didn't support Medicare because 
philosophically they thought the Government shouldn't do anything.
  What would America be like today if we had an aging population 
without Medicare or Social Security? This country would not be as good 
a country as it is without those two important programs.
  People are living longer and better lives. That has placed some 
stress on both Social Security and Medicare, but

[[Page 23882]]

do not let anybody tell anybody else that the problem is that these 
programs do not work. These programs work and work well. People are 
growing older and living better lives in this country. This is a 
problem born of success.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield, of course.
  Mr. CRAIG. I know proper procedure, Mr. President, is to ask the 
question, but it is important to suggest this Senator did not say 
Social Security does not work. Quite the opposite. I believe it has 
worked.
  What I talked about today is who pays for it because what the Senator 
from North Dakota is suggesting, I think--and I agree with him, the 
tremendous benefit that has come, but he has also seen the doubling and 
the quadrupling of taxes on the working people to pay for that benefit.
  I suggest this to the Senator from North Dakota. I think it is 
important. CBO has just scored the Gore transfers within his plan. They 
have suggested those transfers are around $40 trillion over the next 54 
years. If that is true, 40 trillion bucks would have to flow out of 
other sources, such as the general fund, because we know the Vice 
President is not talking about a tax increase. The question is, How do 
you handle it? Do you create higher Government debt? Do you do direct 
investments? The Senate voted 99-0 against Government investments.
  So the legitimate question in this debate is not whether Social 
Security has successfully benefitted current and past retirees. The 
Senator from North Dakota and I just flat agree that it has. Senator 
Dorgan and I know of too many cases of individual citizens who find 
that Social Security is almost their sole source of income. Thank 
goodness it is there. I am talking about is the growing tax burden on 
our children. We are imposing a 20-percent payroll tax liability on the 
young working men and women in this country and we have to be extremely 
cautious.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I reclaim my time.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, $40 trillion in 54 years. Where do we get 
it, and how do we handle it?
  Mr. DORGAN. I reclaim my time. Mr. President, $40 trillion --I do not 
know how big the school of the Senator from Idaho was. I assume he did 
not study a trillion, nor did I. There ought to be rules when one 
starts talking about trillions of dollars. If you extend it for two 
centuries, you can probably come up with hundreds and hundreds of 
trillions of dollars, but it is largely irrelevant.
  The issue is this: We have a Social Security program and a Medicare 
program. Both of them have some funding challenges in the outyears--not 
next year, not in the next 10 years. For Social Security, it is well 
beyond the next three decades, but there are challenges.
  Why do we have these challenges? This is good news. Let's not grit 
our teeth and wring our hands and wipe our brow over good news. People 
are living longer and better lives. Good for them and good for us. This 
is good news. This is born of success.
  If you want to solve the Social Security problem and Medicare 
problem, go back to the old mortality rates. At the turn of the last 
century in 1900, if you lived in this country, you were expected to 
live on average to age 48. Now people are going to live 30 years longer 
on average. That is good news. Good for us. That causes some 
difficulties in Social Security and Medicare. This is not a big 
problem. We can solve this problem.
  Let me describe something the Senator from Idaho needs to know. The 
Senator from Idaho never did address the question of the $1 trillion 
hole. He sort of went over it like: ``Well, people say a trillion 
dollars but'' and then went on.
  If you are going to take money out of the current revenue base for 
Social Security and say to young people who are now working--you can 
use it for private accounts, then what happens to the estimated $1 
trillion over 10 years you took from over here which was to be used to 
pay benefits for current beneficiaries of Social Security?
  I have served in this Congress with my colleague from Idaho and 
others. Over the years, we have put in place $100 billion a year in 
incentives for private savings and private investments. We have SEPs. 
We have traditional and Roth IRAs and 401(k)s. We have them all, and 
more. We say to people: If you put some money away in savings under 
certain conditions, you will have a tax benefit, a tax credit, a tax 
deduction. We spend $100 billion a year in reduced taxes by providing 
incentives for people to create and open private accounts, to invest in 
the stock market, and to invest in other things. We do that. I support 
it. I think it makes good sense for this country. But that is not the 
same as Social Security.
  The word ``security'' ought to mean something. That is the bedrock, 
the foundation of retirement funds that we do as a country. The Senator 
from Idaho asks the question--I want to answer it--he asks the question 
about the issues that the Vice President has raised on the widow's 
benefit to surviving spouses and also of the issue of the motherhood 
penalty.
  The Vice President proposes to solve those, which I think makes some 
sense. I assume the Senator from Idaho will agree that the issue of the 
widow's benefit, to increase the widow's benefit to 75 percent of the 
couple's previously combined Social Security benefit, makes sense. He 
knows and I know all kinds of retired women around this country living 
by themselves who are struggling mightily to make ends meet with a 
pittance in their assistance check, and we need to do better than that. 
The Vice President proposes we do better than that.
  The Senator from Idaho asks: Where does he get the money? I will tell 
him where he gets the money. Then I will ask where does George Bush get 
the $1 trillion because I would like to hear an answer to that.
  Where does Vice President Gore get the money? He does not propose a 
massive $1.5 trillion in tax breaks, most of which goes to upper income 
folks. He proposes a smaller tax cut to working families and uses the 
difference to reduce the Federal debt. When we reduce the Federal debt 
every year, we have a surplus and will get to the point when we wipe 
out the indebtedness. When we wipe out the Federal debt, the third 
largest expenditure in the Federal budget, which is interest on the 
debt, will no longer exist. And that money which we now pay for 
interest on the Federal debt, the Vice President proposes be put into 
the Social Security system to help pay for the two issues the Senator 
from Idaho just described and provide increased solvency for the Social 
Security system. The answer is very simple. The Senator asks where does 
the money come from? It comes from reducing the Federal debt, 
eliminating interest on the debt as cost to the Federal budget, plowing 
that back into the Social Security system to help mothers, widows, and 
to increase and promote solvency in the system. That is the answer. It 
is a very simple answer.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of the Senator 
from Iowa. I will try to finish before 5 minutes. I want to finish this 
point. The Senator from Iowa is on the floor and I know wants to speak. 
Let me finish this point because I think it is so important.
  The difference in priorities here is a priority. I am not saying one 
candidate is a bad person and the other candidate is a good person. 
Those who aspire to be President of this country have different 
priorities. Governor Bush says he supports a very large tax cut right 
up front even before we have the surpluses. We have all these 
economists telling us we are going to have 10 years of surpluses. Most 
cannot remember their telephone numbers, and they are telling us what 
is going to happen in this country 8 years down the road. Nonsense.
  We would be very smart to be more conservative than that. What we 
ought

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to do, as Vice President Gore suggests, is use a substantial portion of 
that estimated surplus to pay down indebtedness. If during tough times 
you run up the Federal debt, during good times you ought to pay it 
down. One of the advantages of doing that is you reduce the third 
largest item in the Federal budget--that is interest on the debt--and 
use that for another purpose. That is exactly the answer to the 
question the Senator raises.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I want to make one additional point. What brought me to 
the floor today was this discussion of $1 trillion that is proposed to 
be taken from the trust funds of Social Security that is now used to 
pay benefits to those who are now retired and to be used instead for 
private accounts for working men and women. My point is this: We 
already spend $100 billion a year to incentivize private investment 
accounts. I am all for that.
  In fact, as far as I am concerned, we can increase that and probably 
will. Vice President Gore suggests Social Security-plus to keep Social 
Security, do not threaten the base of Social Security at all, do not 
take money and divert it, but then on top of Social Security say we are 
going to provide even more incentives for those who want to invest in 
private savings accounts.
  My point is this, very simple: When the issue of credibility is 
raised about all of these claims and counterclaims, there is a serious 
credibility issue of taking $1 trillion out of the current trust fund 
over the next 10 years, $1 trillion that would otherwise go into the 
trust funds to pay current benefits to those who are retired, and 
saying at the same time: It is available for private accounts for other 
people. As I said before, when you take bookkeeping in high school or 
college, they do not teach you ``double entry'' means you can use the 
same money twice. Yet that is exactly what has happened with this 
proposal.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I will yield just for a moment.
  Mr. CRAIG. For 1 minute only.
  The Vice President starts the benefit, accrues the debt into the 
trust fund, and then you have an increased debt over in the trust fund 
of Social Security. An increased debt because the new benefits are 
going out.
  On the other hand, I believe Governor Bush is proposing the 
following: He will take $1 trillion out of a $2.4 trillion surplus to 
create these personal accounts. It is not current money to pay for 
current programs. No. No. The Senator from North Dakota and I agree 
that under current law, and under current benefit rates, Social 
Security is building a trust fund surplus that will peak at $2.4 
trillion.
  Therein lies the difference. Those are the facts. The Gore plan is a 
Ponzi scheme, Mr. President. It is a Ponzi scheme.
  Mr. DORGAN. Let me reclaim my time. I am generous to yield and always 
yield when asked to yield. But this notion of a Ponzi scheme--the 
definition of ``Ponzi,'' it seems to me, is a description that says: 
The surplus that is going to go into the Social Security system each 
year, for a while, is somehow available for some other purpose.
  We have a deliberate surplus going into Social Security. Why? Because 
it is needed, as the Senator from Idaho knows, to meet the day when 
baby boomers retire. We are going to need that money.
  What is going to happen is, if you follow his proposal, or the 
Governor's proposal, and you take that money out, when you need it 
later, it is not going to be there.
  So I do not want anybody to stand up on the floor and say: Oh, yes, 
there is a surplus right now. By the way, that is unobligated. Somebody 
can come and grab that, and it will not matter. That surplus is 
delivered.
  I happened to be on the Ways and Means Committee in the House when we 
passed the Social Security reform plan. We did it to deliberately 
create a surplus to meet the needs when the baby boomers retire.
  When the Second World War ended, the folks came back from fighting 
for this country's liberty and freedom, and they created the largest 
baby crop in the history of our country. They are called ``war 
babies.'' There was this outpouring of love and affection, I guess, and 
we had the largest baby crop in American history.
  When that largest baby crop in American history retires, we are going 
to have a substantial need for all of the surplus we have designed to 
put into that trust fund now.
  My point is, if you take that out now, by saying it is not obligated, 
that we do not need it, I just say you are wrong. You can stand up and 
holler ``Ponzi'' all you want.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. DORGAN. But you are wrong if you take that position.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized 
for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. I want to add to what the Senator from North Dakota is 
saying. I am sorry the Senator from Idaho has left.
  Basically, the Senator from Idaho said Vice President Gore's 
proposals would--I do not know if he used the word ``bankrupt,'' but 
they would destroy the Social Security surplus, et cetera.
  I say to the Senator from North Dakota, the actuaries of the Social 
Security Administration did a study. They said the Gore plan that would 
apply the interest savings, improve the widow's benefits, and end the 
motherhood penalty, would, in total--when you take the total package--
extend the Social Security trust fund solvency to over 50 years. That 
is from the actuaries themselves.
  So if my friend from Idaho were here, I would make sure he heard 
that. Maybe he did.

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