[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3341]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  (Mr. PRICE of Georgia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, America's Social Security system 
has been described with nearly every word in the dictionary: crisis, 
problem, trouble, bankruptcy. One can play the semantics game with 
Social Security all they want, but the fact of the matter is that 
Social Security is broken and needs fixing.
  Back in 1935 the system worked well. Retirement age back then was 65 
and the average life expectancy 63. A pretty good deal for the 
government. Today, however, Americans are living longer than ever and 
far more likely to live long enough to get their benefits.
  Social Security is not a savings plan. It is a pay-as-you-go system 
where today's workers support today's retirees and tomorrow's workers 
support tomorrow's retirees. The number of workers supporting each 
retiree was 42 when the program started. It is now three, with the 
payroll taxes on the paychecks of hard-working Americans going up 600 
percent over the time when it gets to two.
  Just in 3 years, 2008, the government will begin to pay out more in 
Social Security benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. It does not 
take a math whiz to understand that the pay-as-you-go system will not 
provide retirement security for American workers.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a problem and must be resolved. I urge my 
colleagues to join me in solving it.

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