[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13514]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                       SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY FIRST

  (Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, recently some Senate Republicans have 
unveiled a proposal to dedicate the Social Security surplus to private 
accounts. Having worked in an administration that not only proposed 
saving Social Security first, but having dedicated the Social Security 
surplus funds to strengthening the system, I assume that this new idea 
has some concepts of how to pay back the $800 billion that has already 
been taken out of the surplus over the last 6 years. All of a sudden we 
have discovered we are going to dedicate the Social Security surplus to 
Social Security.
  I welcome their new-found conviction, but I assume it also includes 
an idea of how to pay back the $800 billion that we have already 
diverted from the surplus already diverted from Social Security. What I 
did not read is how they are going to do that.
  The Democratic position has been consistent since 1998: Save Social 
Security first. The President lacks a plan on how to do that. The half-
baked plan being touted in the Senate fundamentally misses the goal 
here, which is to strengthen Social Security.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people are not fools. They have rejected 
the President's proposal for privatization, and they will undoubtedly 
reject this new proposal. People like the security that comes with 
Social Security.

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