[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6821-6822]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, in yesterday's Washington Post and also 
in today's Washington Post there were two articles in which Vice 
President Gore is scolding Governor Bush, candidate for president, on 
Social Security. In today's article, Vice President Gore in a speech 
yesterday to labor union members in Atlantic City said that Governor 
Bush had a secret plan to gut the Social Security program.
  Now, the vice president is quite effective in being an advocate for 
the politics of fear, and it is a shame that he would be using this 
opportunity to scare those most vulnerable in our society, and 
particularly those senior citizens who depend upon Social Security for 
their livelihood. So today I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk 
about Social Security.
  The Social Security program began in 1936, and between 1936 and 1998, 
a period of 62 years, in about 47 of those 62 years there was a surplus 
in the Social Security account. In other words, there was more money 
coming in through the payroll tax than was being paid out to 
beneficiaries.
  During those 47 years of surpluses, the Democratic leadership 
controlled the Congress for about 95 percent of that time, and during 
that time in excess of $800 billion was spent by the government from 
that fund.
  Now, the sad thing about it was not only was the Congress during that 
period of time spending all of the income tax, both personal and 
corporate, but they were also spending all of the Social Security 
surplus, and they still were creating deficits, annual deficits, in 
excess of $200 billion a year in many of those years.

                              {time}  1645

  So I went back and I wanted to look at Vice President Gore's record 
while he was in Congress. Now, he served in the U.S. Congress and in 
the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 1992. During that time, Congress spent 
$269 billion of the surplus of Social Security. At least from the 
research that I looked at, I did not see anywhere that Vice President 
Gore expressed any opposition to spending that surplus money. Then, 
during that period, from 1977 to 1992, the Federal debt increased by 
$2.4 trillion. I did not find any record where Vice President Gore 
objected to that kind of addition to our Federal debt.
  So I read this article about the Vice President using the politics of 
fear to scare senior citizens about the future of Social Security, and 
I said, what is the real issue here? When we have people come to 
Congress to lobby on Social Security, we obviously have senior citizens 
who depend upon it for their livelihood. But we also are having more 
and more young married couples with children coming, and they are 
paying

[[Page 6822]]

frequently more in payroll tax than they are in income tax, many of 
them do not have any health insurance, they do not qualify for 
Medicaid, their employer does not provide health insurance, and they 
cannot afford it, and many of them do not believe that Social Security 
will even be there for their benefit when they retire. So Candidate 
Bush simply elevated for discussion the possibility which many of these 
young people want of allowing them the opportunity to direct up to 2 
percent of their payroll tax into the equity markets.
  Now, he did not say that he advocated that, he said that he wanted to 
explore it, because all of us know that by the year 2032, Social 
Security will be bankrupt. There is a surplus now and there will be 
until the year 2013, but at that time, the Federal Government is going 
to have to start repaying some of the $800 billion that it owes Social 
Security.
  So Candidate Bush is looking for some long-term solutions for Social 
Security and its solvency. Of all of the articles that I have read 
about Vice President Gore, I do not see that he has ever advocated any 
solution, but he has been effective in advocating the politics of fear.
  Now, we know from his record that this Vice President has no 
objection to the government spending every dime of the Social Security 
surplus. But, it appears from what he said yesterday and the day before 
that he does not want to even discuss giving young people just entering 
the workplace the opportunity to invest up to 2 percent of their 
payroll tax into the equity markets. We know that historically the 
Federal Government on the $800 billion of the Social Security money 
that it has borrowed is paying on the average of 5 percent a year. That 
is about what it averages out to. We know that historically the equity 
markets have increased over that period of time by about 14 or 15 
percent a year.
  So I would simply say, it is time for us to stop using the politics 
of fear as advocated by the Vice President and start looking for real 
solutions and having real discussions about how can we solve the long-
term solvency of Social Security so that not only will it be available 
for senior citizens today, but it will also be available for those 
young men and women just entering the workplace today.

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