[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 14526]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       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, our Republican colleagues have unveiled a 
new proposal to privatize the Social Security surplus. Maybe I am a 
little confused, but was President Bush not just in West Virginia 
saying the Social Security trust fund and its surplus did not exist? In 
West Virginia the President said, There is no Social Security trust 
fund, just IOUs stacked in an old filing cabinet.
  In Washington, D.C., this discovery of the surplus counts as 
progress. I welcome the Republicans' discovery of the Social Security 
surplus. The problem is in the last 5 years they have spent $630 
billion of the Social Security surplus on everything under the sun but 
Social Security.
  Privatization of Social Security is the poison pill to progress. Our 
first priority should be to save Social Security first. That is the 
position of the American people, and that is the position of the 
Democratic Party. Before we create private accounts or do anything else 
to fundamentally alter Social Security, we must guarantee its future. 
The goal is to strengthen Social Security for the future, something 
privatization fails to do. The American people have rejected the 
President's privatization proposal of Social Security, and they will 
undoubtedly reject this unbaked new idea.

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