[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4182]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             KEEPING SOCIAL SECURITY SECURE FOR THE FUTURE

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, President Bush and congressional 
Republicans have yet to offer a plan that makes Social Security solvent 
beyond the year 2052. As far as I am concerned, until the Bush 
administration takes its privatization plan off the table, we cannot 
work together to address Social Security solvency.
  Even one of our Republican colleagues, Senator Lindsey Graham, has 
admitted that privatization is not a plan that will fix Social 
Security. On Tuesday he said, ``We now have this huge fight over a 
sideshow. It has always been a sideshow, but we sold it as the main 
event.'' That is a Republican Senator calling the President's plan a 
sideshow.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a sideshow because it does nothing to strengthen 
Social Security. Democrats are willing to work with Republicans to 
extend solvency beyond 2052, but we cannot do that until Republicans 
are serious about extending solvency and rejecting privatization.
  Democrats want to keep Social Security secure for the future. When 
that is the Republican goal, we can finally begin to work together in a 
bipartisan fashion.

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