[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7907]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



           THE RISK OF DOING NOTHING TO SAVE 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, yesterday the Governor of Texas 
came out with a proposal that we have got to do something on Social 
Security to save it. He suggested that some of the tax that American 
workers pay in should end up in their own name invested to bring in 
more returns to Social Security and to those individuals when they 
retire.
  I think that when Al Gore suggests that it is risky to invest any of 
that money in indexed funds, or in 401(k) type funds or, for government 
workers, the Thrift Savings Account funds, where their performance has 
averaged a very high positive return, we should also note that there 
has never been a 12-year period in the history of this country where 
indexed stocks did not have a positive return. In fact, according to 
Mr. Jeremy Siegel, there has been a positive return of at least 1 
percent for any 12-year period, even during the worst of times, and 
over 70 years there has been an average return of 7.5 percent.
  Some suggest that it's risky to have real investments.
  What is really risky is not doing anything and spending Social 
Security trust fund money on other government programs.

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