[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6953-6957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here this evening to 
continue the discussion of Social Security, what it is, where it is, 
what we think the problems with it might be, and what some of the 
solutions might be. I know some of my colleagues have been in a 
discussion on this important program for the last hour or so, and they 
plan to join me shortly.
  I would like to start by laying out for my colleagues the history of 
Social Security, what it was, what it has done for Americans, and where 
it is today.

                              {time}  2100

  Social Security, as most Americans know, has been a terrific 
institution that generations of Americans have relied on. It is a 
system that I think most of us would agree has to be preserved and 
protected for our children and our grandchildren.
  Mr. Speaker, my 84-year-old mother has been drawing Social Security, 
and she is at that point where it is her sole source of income. She 
relies on it very heavily as do millions of senior citizens, and we 
certainly want to make sure that all of those senior citizens get every 
dime that they are expecting to come their way. But we also need to 
make sure that our children, and my children are in their thirties, it 
seems every day they age another year, an indication of how old I am 
getting and how rapidly, my children are in their thirties and their 
children, my four wonderful grandchildren, are 6, 5, 3 and 3. We need 
to make sure that as we look forward to the future of Social Security 
that it is there for our grandchildren as well.
  I think most Americans, but not all, and most of my colleagues know 
that Social Security does much more than provide for a retirement, for 
assistance in retirement. It provides spousal benefits, survivor 
benefits, dependent benefits, and disability benefits. I believe that 
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would like to make sure that 
those benefits, that that security, that that safety net continues into 
the future for our children and our grandchildren.
  Social Security has traditionally functioned as a pay-as-you-go 
system. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought us Social 
Security back in 1935, it was a contributory social insurance program. 
What does that mean? That means that workers put in and workers receive 
benefits. All workers pay in; all workers receive benefits. It really 
was not designed as an investment program. It was not designed to do 
anything other than provide some insurance for you when you reached 
your retirement years. We have paid for it by taking taxes from the 
wage earner. When President Roosevelt started the program, we took 1 
percent from the employee and 1 percent from the employer. Two percent 
of the first $3,000 earned was taken up in Social Security taxes to pay 
for the benefits of current and future retirees. Today's workers 
support today's retirees through a 12.4 percent tax, one dollar in 
every eight, half of it paid by the employer, half of it paid by the 
employee, on the first $90,000 they earn each year. What a difference, 
2 percent to 12.4 percent. Two dollars in 100 to one dollar in eight. 
The program has changed.
  It has changed in another fundamental way that I think that all of 
us, Mr. Speaker, need to be aware of. As late as 1950, and I will refer 
to the chart here beside me, there were 16 American workers paying for 
every one beneficiary. Today, we are down to 3.3 Americans working and 
paying taxes for every beneficiary. Again, what a demographic change in 
America, a demographic change in the United States, for many reasons, 
life expectancies are longer, and that is a good thing, we are living 
longer, healthier lives, families are smaller, and that trend 
continues. So by 2035, 2040, when younger workers retire, we will have 
only two Americans working for every retiree. That is a pretty tough 
load for younger workers to shoulder.
  What does that mean in terms of money in the program? As I think most 
Americans know, we have been taking in those taxes, we have been paying 
out benefits and taking the excess money

[[Page 6954]]

and putting it into a trust fund. I am going to get to that trust fund 
and talk about it in just a minute. But we need to also be aware, I 
think it is important for us to understand in the current system how 
benefits are calculated, because as we look to ways that we might need 
to strengthen Social Security, we need to understand the current 
system; and I would like to take just a minute to talk about how that 
works.
  The Social Security Administration looks at every working American's 
working life, all the years that they have worked. So if you, like me 
and many Americans, you started off working with a paying job in the 
grocery store or maybe the newspaper or something when you were 16 or 
15 and you work until your full retirement age, which by the time 
younger workers retire under the current system is not 65 anymore, it 
is 67, you could have been working and paying Social Security taxes for 
50 years. The Social Security Administration takes those 50 years and 
they take your most productive, your highest paid 35 years, and they 
put it into a formula and, like everything these days, they do not sit 
down with a hand calculator, there is a computer that has a formula 
that actually weights the system so that you get a little bit higher 
percentage, if you will, if you are a lower-paid worker and a little 
bit less if you are higher paid; but they put it into the mill, they 
take those highest 35 years, they average it out, an index is put to 
it, and you come up with a number and that is your retirement benefit. 
That is your monthly check, which as our current retirees know, that is 
adjusted for inflation every year. That is how it works today.
  I mentioned that with the increased life expectancy and the smaller 
families and the lower number of workers per each retiree, we get into 
a cash flow problem, that is, at some point we are not going to be 
taking in as much money as we are paying out if we get to the point 
where there are only two workers for each retiree.
  Let us take a look at another chart here. There are, I suppose, many 
ways to do this. I have been holding some town hall meetings back in my 
home district, the Second District of Minnesota. One chart that I have 
often shown shows that our costs are exceeding our revenue. Another way 
of talking about it, and I have used this chart as well in those town 
hall meetings, is to show that in the near term, we are taking in more 
money in FICA, more money in Social Security taxes, that is this dark 
little bump right here, than we are paying out and that excess money is 
being marked and put in special Treasury bonds redeemable only by the 
Social Security Administration, the trust fund, to pay future benefits.
  But the Social Security Administration, the trustees report annually 
as they look forward to the projections for upcoming years what the 
health of Social Security is. Their latest report, which came out 
about, oh, 6 weeks or so ago, last month, said that in the year 2017, 
just 12 years from now, right here on this chart, that we are going to 
start paying out more money in benefits to retirees than we are taking 
in in Social Security taxes. More money going out than we are taking 
in. That puts us into a cash deficit situation.
  What are we going to do about that? The Social Security 
Administration also pointed out in that report that the Social Security 
trust fund, those special-issue Treasury bonds, will run out of those 
bonds in the year 2041. So at least on paper for a few years, we will 
be able to pay those benefits out of the Social Security trust fund by 
redeeming those special-issue Treasury bonds.
  The challenge for us here in this House, in this Congress, is how are 
we Americans going to redeem those bonds in order to meet our 
obligation to retirees? That is something we need to think about, 
because the situation does not get any better in the next 5 years or 10 
years or 15 or 20. It does not get better. In fact, even when we have 
redeemed those bonds, as I mentioned earlier, the Social Security 
Administration says that by 2041, there are not any bonds left to 
redeem, and so we are back to that position, we are back to this 
situation where we have two workers for each retiree.
  Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that is a situation that we have to 
address. It is our responsibility to address it. The need to address it 
is now, because there is another little bump here that I think is 
important to us. In just 3 more years, the leading edge of the baby 
boomers start to retire. You can see the way the line changes that we 
have less money coming in and more money going out because those baby 
boomers, and I have to admit that I am one of them, baby boomers are 
going to start to earn retirement benefits, take retirement benefits. 
We start on a down slope, and by 2017 we cross that line. We need to 
decide what we are going to do about that for the near term and for the 
long term.
  Those Treasury bonds, I have heard some people say, I was in a town 
hall meeting and some young man stood up, he was about the age of my 
children, actually perhaps a little younger, I think he was around 30, 
and he said, well, you know, I'm planning on not having any Social 
Security whatsoever. There's not going to be anything there for me. I 
know that is a sentiment that is sometimes widely shared, but let us be 
honest, that is not true. Even under the current system, there would be 
something there in Social Security. I think the administration is 
forecasting now that because there are only two workers for each 
retiree, that there will be some money coming, around 75 percent of 
what would have been expected. That is a horrible return. It is a 
horrible rate of return for a young man or a young woman who pays into 
Social Security all their life for the benefit of current retirees; and 
when their time comes to retire, the best that they can hope is 75 
cents back on the dollar that they were expecting. By the way, if they 
are going to get the 75 cents on the dollar, that assumes that they are 
going to live a full life. It just seems to me that we need to be able 
to do better for our children and for our grandchildren.
  I see that my colleague, the gentleman from Arizona, has arrived. I 
know he has been working on this for many years and has a proposal of 
his own, and I want to yield to him in just a moment; but it is 
interesting to me that when I have a town hall meeting, and it does not 
matter if there are 50 people or 100 people, they tend to be with the 
senior citizens who are very interested in this subject, they 
understand what it is, they receive Social Security checks; but when I 
ask the question, how many of you think that we need to do something to 
fix Social Security for our children and our grandchildren, it is now 
almost every hand in the air. When I first started to ask the question 
weeks ago, not every hand went up. But I think more and more Americans 
understand as we continue this dialogue and as we continue this debate, 
their understanding is that there is a problem and we need to do 
something to address it.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) who has done an 
awful lot of work on this subject.
  Mr. KOLBE. I appreciate the gentleman from Minnesota for yielding, 
and I thank him for taking this hour of time here this evening to talk 
about this issue. It is one which is of such great importance, not just 
for the current generation, not just for those who have retired, but 
for the next generation, for those who will retire in the future.

                              {time}  2115

  I listened to him earlier talking about some of the elements of this 
problem. I think he has outlined them very well.
  The problem with Social Security is relatively simple, or the problem 
that we have with the current system of Social Security is relatively 
easy to define. And that is that we have people living longer, we have 
more retirees, and we have fewer people coming into the workforce to 
pay for them.
  That chart that the gentleman has up there, I think shows it so very 
well. At one time, in 1950, we had 16 people working for every person 
that was retired. Today it is a little over three people, and in a few 
years, a couple of decades, it will be two working people for everyone 
who is retired. That

[[Page 6955]]

means two working people at each month have to pay sufficient taxes to 
cover the benefit that one single person is going to receive from 
Social Security. It is not sustainable over the long term, and it 
cannot go on in that fashion. So we need to do something about it. And 
I think the gentleman is right for coming to the floor tonight to 
suggest that this Congress needs to deal with it.
  I am really surprised and somewhat frustrated and chagrined at some 
of my colleagues on the other side who simply say there is not a 
problem, we do not need to deal with this, we are not going to try to 
fix this thing, we do not have to fix this thing now, we can do it 
sometime in the future. Every year that we delay this becomes more 
costly.
  As the gentleman noted, I started introducing a bill 7 years ago with 
Congressman Stenholm, now with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd), 
and our plan is still the only bipartisan bill which has been 
introduced in Congress. And when we began with that legislation, we had 
certain costs to it, but each time, each Congress that we have 
reintroduced it, we, of course, have had to adjust, and we are closer 
now to the dates of when revenues will be less than the benefits being 
paid out, and that just makes it more costly to fix.
  It is not very far away. In fact, in one sense a really critical date 
comes in just about 2 fiscal years, in the year 2008, and that is when 
the revenues actually start to decline. At that point we are going to 
have to be doing more borrowing because Social Security is going to be 
covering a bit less of the deficit that we have right now in the 
general operating part of the budget. But the critical year really is 
in 2017 where the lines cross, which the chart that he has in front of 
him there shows. At that point, the benefits being paid out exceed the 
revenues which are coming in, the taxes that are being paid in. So 
Social Security has to go to those bonds that it has.
  The President went the other day to Parkersburg, West Virginia, to 
take a look at that, and I think we all know what he saw there. A 
couple of filing cabinets with a lot of paper in it. There is nothing 
really in the trust fund. There never has been anything in the trust 
fund. It is not as though somebody robbed it. It is as though it was 
never created to be that way. The money has simply always gone straight 
into the Treasury and has been used to cover other operating expenses 
with the promise that some day the government would redeem those IOUs 
and use those to pay the benefits. When we start redeeming those, it is 
going to be very costly because we are going to have to be doing 
borrowing, as the gentleman knows very well.
  That is why this is such a critical problem and why we really need to 
deal with this issue now and not wait, and I really commend the 
gentleman for coming to the floor to talk about this.
  I am going to listen for a few more minutes, and then I would like to 
participate again because I think I have some thoughts about the ways 
in which we go about fixing this because there is a fairly limited 
number of ways in which we can go about fixing it.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
  Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
very much for his hard work on this important subject and for joining 
in the discussion here this evening.
  I would like to talk about that trust fund again for a few more 
minutes because the gentleman is perfectly correct. The President went 
out to West Virginia and took a look at the filing cabinets where the 
bonds, special issue Treasury bonds are being held, redeemable only by 
the Social Security Administration, unlike other government bonds that 
are issued. And we have to redeem those things. In order to meet our 
commitment to retirees when we stop taking in as much money in Social 
Security taxes we are paying out in benefits, we are going to have to 
redeem those.
  And they are very much like an IOU. I do not mean to say that in a 
derogatory way, but in this particular case because of these special 
bonds and the way they work, we, all of us in America, all of my 
colleagues, we have to redeem those bonds out of the general fund. We 
borrowed it from ourselves; now we have to pay it back to ourselves. 
And sometimes in a town hall meeting, someone says, That is easy, just 
pay it back.
  That is going to require a great deal of sacrifice on the part of 
Americans as we look to see where we are going to get the money to pay 
those back.
  And more than that, as I mentioned earlier this evening, even when we 
redeem those bonds and we pay it back so that retirees get their 
benefits, by 2041 the Social Security Administration says those bonds 
are going to be exhausted. And I suppose we could spend a lot of time 
on the floor of this Chamber, as we are wont to do, to debate whether 
that year is really 2040 or 2039 or 2042 or 2043. The point is, once we 
redeem those bonds, and it is a major challenge for all of us to decide 
how we are going to do that, those bonds are gone and our children and 
our grandchildren will be receiving only 75 cents on the dollar they 
expect.
  So as the gentleman said earlier, it is a problem that cannot be 
pushed off. It is something that we have to address in this House, in 
this body, quickly.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KLINE. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding again.
  First of all, I think we have succeeded in one very large way, and 
that is that the American people, as the gentleman pointed out, do now 
understand there is a problem. He goes to a town hall; I go to a town 
hall. He talks to people, and people understand there is a problem. 
Polling data shows that 80 percent of Americans now think there is a 
significant problem with Social Security, and Congress needs to fix it.
  So they are expecting us to do that, and I think the fact that he has 
come to the floor that there are a lot of proposals, mine, a number of 
other proposals that are on the floor that have been suggested. The one 
that I have with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd), I might add, is 
a bipartisan approach to it.
  But I think that people do understand there is a problem and that we 
need to fix it, because as the gentleman pointed out, if we do not do 
anything, those IOUs, even the borrowing from the IOUs run out at a 
certain point, and that is somewhere, we believe, about 2041 is what 
the projections are today; and when that happens, if we have sat here 
all these years and done absolutely nothing, there would be an 
immediate 26 percent cut in benefits. The gentleman probably will not 
be in Congress. I know I will not be in Congress at that point. He 
might be around for a while longer. But at that point there would be a 
political revolution in our land if we had not done anything at that 
point. So it behooves us to fix it now while we have a chance to do it 
when it is not as costly, and I think that is what the gentleman has 
pointed out here tonight, and I appreciate his talking about this.
  Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman mentioned 
that there are a number of proposals. I found it interesting, as this 
discussion has moved forward and I was trying to keep track of what 
those proposals involved, that there were so many of them that I simply 
could not keep them organized in my head and decide which ones had 
personal accounts, which ones did not, how big the accounts were, how 
they address solvency.
  So there is a wonderful young woman on my staff, and I know the 
gentleman understands how that works, we are so dependent on the bright 
folks who work with us, but she put together a table, and I know people 
cannot see it from here, but I will show it to the gentleman, that has 
these plans going across the top and the different aspects of them. And 
right now there are up to 14, I think, on my chart here of different 
ideas that people have brought forward to address this issue.
  And I think that is a healthy thing as we move into the debate. There 
will come a time when we will need to have a debate and have a bill or 
amendments

[[Page 6956]]

on the floor and move to a solution, but I am firmly convinced that it 
is absolutely critical that we do that sooner rather than later.
  In these plans, many of them, most of the ones that I have on this 
chart because it has been my colleagues from this side of the aisle who 
have come forward with the proposals for the most part, and the 
gentleman mentioned he has a bipartisan bill that they are looking at, 
but these proposals include personal accounts as part of the solution 
for the long-term solvency of Social Security. And there are 
differences in all of these, and I know the gentleman was earlier this 
evening in a roundtable discussion with some other authors of bills as 
the pros and cons of the different measures were discussed, but I think 
there are some things that are common that we all need to keep in mind.
  All of the proposals on my chart here, which includes the outline 
that the President had, have recognized that we have retirees today and 
those about to retire, Americans born before 1950 that will not be 
affected by whatever our proposal is. And I think that is important for 
the peace of mind, I think, of my 84-year-old mother and her friends. 
They do not want to contemplate a change in the program, even though 
many of these programs virtually guarantee that everyone will get a 
benefit very much like the one they are getting, in some cases more of 
a benefit. But we need to reassure all of the seniors in our districts 
and our family that they will not be hurt; their program will not be 
changed. Their Social Security check will not be affected by the issues 
that we are debating here in the House today.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KLINE. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has made a very 
important point, one that we need to stress, because there are a lot of 
people all over the place in various groups that are not interested in 
seeing this problem fixed. They have been trying to scare a lot of 
seniors, and it is wrong to do that because none of the plans, not one 
of the plans that are on the table suggest that there is going to be 
any change in the benefits for those who are retired today or for those 
who are near retirement.
  So I think it is very important, as the gentleman said, that his 84-
year-old mother understand, and all our other senior citizens 
understand, that we are really not talking about changing any benefits 
for them.
  We are talking about the next generation. We are talking about their 
grandchildren, how could we fix it for their grandchildren so that 
their grandchildren will be able to say that there is something in the 
Social Security system that is going to be there for me.
  A person who is retiring today has less than a 1 percent return on 
all the taxes they have paid over the years up to retirement in terms 
of what they are going to get out of it between now and their expected 
death. A person who is coming into the workforce today at the age of 21 
will have a negative rate of return. In other words, they will lose 
money based on what they are going to pay in taxes versus what they are 
going to get in benefits. So it is a bleak system for young people, and 
we need to do something to strengthen it for them.
  Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I very much appreciate 
the gentleman's comment that there are some scare tactics out there, 
and that is unfortunate because when I look at all of these plans that 
are across here, and it is the whole range, the gentleman's plan, 
Senator Graham's plan, the gentleman from Florida's (Mr. Shaw) plan, 
the President's, the AARP's, and others, I do not think that there are 
any of these plans that want to do any harm to Social Security for the 
long term. They do not want to leave our children and our grandchildren 
holding the bag.
  They would like to make sure that something is there, and it troubles 
me when evil motives are attributed to those who are working the best 
they can, the hardest they can, to find a solution to this horrific 
cash flow problem that we are facing and to the fact that we are going 
to be down to two workers for each retiree by the time my children and 
grandchildren retire.
  We need to work to find a solution for that, and I, for one, am 
perfectly willing to listen to proposals from my colleagues on either 
side of the aisle, and I believe those proposals, certainly those on 
this page in front of me, come from people who sincerely want to make 
the system better.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield once more, we 
can take that issue off the table, then, that we are not really talking 
about changing the retirement benefits for those who are retired today 
or near retirement so we can clear that off the table. Then we need to 
turn to the issue of what is it we need to do to strengthen Social 
Security and how do we do it, how do we accomplish that?
  I do not think the gentleman has his chart down there, but there are 
really only three things that we can do with Social Security. One is we 
can raise taxes, we can cut the benefits, or we can increase the rate 
of return on what one has in the account in their investment.
  So it is one of those three things that we can do, and that brings me 
to what I want to talk about, if I might, why personal accounts are 
important. I am not going to talk specifically about my legislation 
tonight, but I want to talk about what is a key cornerstone, I think, 
of most of the plans that are out there, and that is the personal 
account.

                              {time}  2130

  Why are personal accounts important? Because personal accounts, 
frankly, they do not fix the solvency of Social Security; they do not 
fix it. You have to do other things to make sure that Social Security 
is solvent. But the personal account is that link to the next 
generation. It is the promise to the next generation of young people 
that there will be something in the Social Security plan that will make 
sure they do not have a negative rate of return. Because if you have a 
personal account that grows, that can actually grow, you are going to 
have a better retirement than you would have otherwise.
  So the personal account is absolutely important. It is important both 
economically and politically. Economically, to ensure that the young 
people have a better rate of return, have a retirement that will yield 
them, really yield them something, bring them something. But 
politically it is important because it is necessary if we are going to 
shore up the support for Social Security among young people.
  Those who are opposed to doing anything about this are very 
shortsighted, in that they are risking losing political support for a 
plan that we all know is very, very important. The longer it goes on 
and the rate of return is less and less for people, there will be less 
support for Social Security. We need to do something to fix that, and 
that is why personal accounts are so important. I appreciate the 
gentleman yielding to me.
  Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for making that point. 
It does seem to me to be unacceptable that we are looking at a system 
that is going to provide a 1 percent rate of return or a negative rate 
of return. I think the gentleman, in an earlier discussion we were 
having on the floor, made the point that in some cases it is not only 
no return, but a horrific rate of return, and I think his example was 
the single parent. He used the example of the single mother who is 57 
or 58 years old, we will use 57, my age, has a couple of children, they 
are through school, they have graduated high school; and this woman 
started work when she was 17, she has been paying into the Social 
Security system, has paid her Social Security taxes faithfully for 40 
years, and then tragedy strikes and she dies, and her family gets 
nothing; a $255 death benefit I think it is today for the thousands of 
dollars that she has paid into the system. It seems to me we ought to 
be able to do better than that, and I think that we can.
  When we look at the proposals that are out there, there are a wide 
variety

[[Page 6957]]

of them, as I mentioned earlier, and the gentleman explained some of 
the important reasons why a personal account needs to be an important 
part of this. He said that a personal account does not fix the solvency 
issue. I might argue that if the personal account is large enough, it 
will fix the solvency issue, as these plans vary widely insofar as how 
much money is put into these accounts. But, in any case, it is part of 
addressing the solvency issue because of the higher rate of return, 
because of the higher growth, it puts more money into the system and 
helps us get at this problem of cash deficits.
  It also takes money off the table, money that is in a personal 
account that cannot be used to fund other programs. I found in many 
town hall meetings people would say, well, you, Members of Congress, 
you spent the money on other things. If it is in a personal account, it 
cannot be used to fund other things; and as I mentioned in the example 
of the 57-year-old man or woman who dies early, in a personal account, 
they can leave that money, the money in the account is inheritable, 
they can leave it to their children or their grandchildren, so they do 
get something back for their 40 or more years of paying into the 
system.
  Well, the debate is an important one. I am glad that it is engaged. I 
think that it is important that we recognize that we need to work 
together and try to address these problems. These are not uniquely 
Republican problems or Democrat problems; these are the facts of the 
program as it exists today, as it has worked for the last 60 years. The 
virtually inescapable change in demographics, again, that is not a 
Republican prediction or a Democrat prediction, or an administration 
prediction; those are the predictions of the actuaries of the Social 
Security Administration itself.
  So we know that we are facing, we are facing a problem with Social 
Security. I am pleased to see that Americans, apparently from coast to 
coast, and certainly in my district in Minnesota, have recognized that 
we have to do something.
  I believe that as the debate goes forward, we will see that there are 
some clear benefits to including personal accounts as part of, as part 
of the solution, because of the enormous potential for growth through 
the power of compound interest investment in very diversified funds, 
which may or may not include any stocks.
  I know there is a fear out there sometimes when I am talking to my 
constituents and they say, well, we do not want to put it in the risky 
stock market; what if we are about to retire and the stock market 
crashes and we lose all of our money. There are a couple of things 
about that. Almost all of these programs on this big chart include a 
combination of traditional Social Security benefits and those in your 
personal account. Most of them require that the funds in the accounts 
be invested in very diversified accounts; and most of them would 
encourage, if not insist in some cases, that the money be invested in 
virtually risk-free instruments, bonds, or the like as one gets closer 
and closer to retirement, so that one's retirement would not be 
affected by any fluctuations in the market.
  There are a wide range of approaches. Those with personal accounts 
call on that wonderful power of compound interest to grow the money in 
the account and, therefore, grow the money overall in Social Security 
and start to address that solvency issue. There is much debate still 
coming up. I look forward to the continuing discussion.
  I would like to just close by sort of recapping for the benefit of 
all here that there are some problems which we have to address. Social 
Security's financing is unsustainable without change. As I said, most 
Americans recognize that. We are taking in more money than we are 
paying out in benefits, but that is going to change. It is going to 
change in 2017 when we start to pay out more benefits than we take in 
in taxes. That is rapidly approaching us. The baby boomers start to 
retire in a very, very few years. We need to get at that system, fix 
the system so that it will be there for not only my 84-year-old mother, 
not only for my children who are in their 30s, but for my four 
wonderful grandkids as well and for all of my colleagues' grandkids.

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