[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18311-18312]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           AMERICA'S ECONOMY

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Our economy, as the Presiding Officer and others 
know, demands two major priorities from Congress right now: to reduce 
spending and to foster job creation. Equally important, you cannot do 
one without the other. We cannot only cut our way to prosperity. They 
cannot be mutually exclusive goals. We can make sensible reforms that 
reduce the deficit while promoting job creation.
  Here is what we should be talking about: first, closing tax loopholes 
for companies that ship jobs overseas and encourage American job 
creation. That saves $19 billion over 10 years. It will mean companies 
choosing to manufacture in the United States instead of China, instead 
of Mexico, in many cases.
  My State, Ohio, is the third leading manufacturing State in the 
country. We produce more than any other State except California, three 
times our population, and Texas, twice our population.
  Second, let's give faster access to generic drugs to treat breast 
cancer and MS and rheumatoid arthritis. That saves $2.3 billion over 10 
years. It saves for taxpayers. It saves for insurance companies, 
meaning insurance rates will go up at a much lower rate. It saves for 
individuals reaching into their pocket and paying copays.
  Third, let's strengthen and streamline the farm safety net. That 
saves $20 billion over 10 years. There is simply no reason that large 
farmers who have profitable years need to get direct payments, need to 
get farm subsidies. Establishing a safety net makes sense. If prices 
are particularly low for a couple of years, if yields are particularly 
low for a couple of years, farmers need that safety net because we do 
not want to lose more family farms. But do not continue to give farm 
subsidies to farmers who simply do not need them.
  Fourth, let's ask the wealthiest Americans to go back to the same tax 
rate they paid during the Clinton years. That will raise $800 billion 
over the next 10 years. During the Clinton years, 21 million private 
sector jobs--net increase--occurred, even with a higher tax rate on 
high-income people as we balanced the budget, and during the 8 Bush 
years, two major tax cuts mostly for the wealthy, which the Presiding 
Officer and I and others opposed, under the belief that trickle-down 
economics would work, there was only a 1 million private sector net 
increase in jobs in those 8 years. We started with a huge budget 
surplus and ended with a huge budget deficit. We know that kind of 
economics does not work.
  Those four ways are just four of the many I can talk about at another 
time of reducing our deficit and making our economy stronger. Too many 
in Washington seek to undermine one of the programs that kept our 
country strong in good economic times and bad economic times; that is, 
Social Security.
  I am now a grandfather. I turned 59 a couple of weeks ago. Our first 
grandson is 3 years old. I understand it becomes more personal. I 
understand how grandparents now get to spend more time with their 
grandchildren. Margaret Mead once said: Wisdom and knowledge are passed 
from grandparent to grandchild.
  The Presiding Officer, who has enough gray hair, would understand 
that, understands that because Medicare and Social Security have helped 
Americans live longer and healthier lives, it does give us--that is why 
it is personal for me, it does give us more time with our grandkids, 
and passing on that knowledge and wisdom that only grandparents can 
then give to their grandchildren.
  Yet too many seniors have worked hard, played by the rules, and 
require Social Security simply to live. More than half of Ohio's 
seniors get more than half their income in their retirement years from 
Social Security. That is how important it is. Some seniors get almost 
all of their income from Social Security. That may be as little as 
$1,000 or $1,100 or $1,200 a month. That is what they live on.
  Yet as more and more seniors rely on Social Security, they went 2 
years without a cost-of-living adjustment. Why? Because the cost-of-
living adjustment under Federal law--this is not the fault of the 
President, although it may have been several Presidents ago; this is 
not the fault of the Congress, although it may have been when it was 
decided several Congresses ago--but the law simply says that the Social 
Security cost-of-living adjustment is the so-called Consumer Price 
Index, which is determined for a typical 40-year-old in the workplace, 
not a 70-year-old who is in retirement. The 40-year-old in the 
workplace has significantly lower health care costs, perhaps has higher 
transportation costs getting to or from work, while the senior who is 
70 has significantly higher health care costs as a percentage of their 
income and significantly higher heating costs, just to keep warm in the 
winter, cool in the summer, because of their lifestyle.
  This Consumer Price Index, which is the determination for whether you 
get a cost-of-living adjustment, is based on a working 40-year-old, not 
a retired 70-year-old. That is what we want to fix. That is why I have 
introduced my legislation to do CPI--instead of CPI-W, Consumer Price 
Index-Working Person, the way it is now, to change it to CPI-E, 
Consumer Price Index-Elderly, to base it on those who get the COLA.
  America's seniors did not get a COLA the last 2 years because it did 
not reflect their cost as much as it reflected not very high inflation 
among 40-year-old working families. Belle, a senior community activist 
from Shaker Heights, recently shared with me her story that seniors 
across America can relate to, how difficult it is to meet their needs 
when Social Security benefits do not. Half of her income goes to health 
care costs not covered by Medicare--hearing aids, glasses, dental care, 
in addition to supplemental health insurance she pays. And as Belle 
will tell anyone, she, like millions of Americans, worked hard and 
contributed to Social Security. They do not see it as--the word we use 
around here--an ``entitlement;'' they see it as an investment that they 
made because every working person in Denver, in Colorado Springs, in 
Aurora, in Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton paid into Social Security 
and Medicare every day of their work lives. They have invested. They 
have earned it. They were promised it.
  But, presently, as I said, COLAs are based on the Consumer Price 
Index for workers, for wage earners, instead of the Consumer Price 
Index for the elderly. Those 65 and older tend to spend about twice as 
much on health care as the general population, twice as much out of a 
smaller income, than half as much out of a bigger income that a 40-
year-old would get.
  So that is where we need to go with the Social Security cost-of-
living adjustment. But in the so-called supercommittee, which was not 
able to come to an agreement, there were many in the supercommittee, 
particularly Republicans, particularly sort of ultraconservative 
politicians who do not much like Social Security to begin with, wanted 
what is called the chained CPI. The chained CPI. They called it a 
technical fix. But it is really a regressive tax increase that would 
cut senior citizens' cost-of-living adjustment.
  They did the chained CPI because it would save Social Security money. 
Well, to save Social Security money, what does that mean? It means you 
are taking money from benefits, especially for low and middle-income 
seniors, which is most of them. Those are people who rely on Social 
Security for most of their income.
  Their chained CPI would mean the annual benefits for a typical 65-
year-old would be $136 less. Over time, a typical 75-year-old would 
receive $560 less a year, and at 85 they would receive $1,000 less a 
year, and at 95, as more seniors live to that age, when they need their 
benefit, the cut is $1,400 a year. You know, that may not be much

[[Page 18312]]

money for my colleagues, but it is a lot of money if you are a senior 
living on a fixed income.
  We know how to balance this budget. We did it when the Presiding 
Officer and I were in the House of Representatives. We did it with a 
Democratic President and a Congress that at least would go along with 
him and did not draw these lines in the sand and make signed pledges to 
lobbyists. They are signing pledges to lobbyists, saying: I will not do 
this; I will do not do that, instead of thinking for themselves and 
signing a pledge only to the Constitution of the United States of 
America.
  We knew how to get to a balanced budget. We can do this. We did it in 
the 1990s. We got to a balanced budget without reducing the cost-of-
living adjustment, without turning Medicare over to the insurance 
industry. You know, to me there are some radical Members of the House 
of Representatives, there are some in the Senate, who want to see 
Social Security turned over to Wall Street, let them run it; Medicare 
over to the insurance companies, let them run it.
  When President Bush wanted to privatize Social Security in 1995, the 
Presiding Officer was in the House of Representatives. Imagine if we 
had gone along with President Bush's idea to privatize Social Security. 
Imagine what would have happened. We know what happened to people's 
401(k)s. Imagine what would have happened to the monthly Social 
Security payments.
  The government, as much as people criticize it, has never failed once 
to pay a Social Security check on time. It never failed to pay it at 
all. Since 1937, when Social Security paid out its first lump sum, I 
believe, or death benefit, and in 1940 when Social Security started 
paying monthly benefits, it never failed to pay, never paid late. So we 
know how it works.
  If we had turned it over to Wall Street, who knows what would have 
happened. If we had turned Medicare over to insurance companies, as the 
Ryan proposal over in the House wants to do and as 40 colleagues here 
want to do, who knows what would have happened. We know it would not be 
Medicare the way we are used to it. We know it would not be Social 
Security the way we are used to it or the Medicare that serves the 
American public or the Social Security that serves the American public. 
Those two programs, if lifted 75 years ago--it was for the poorest, 
lowest income, the most indigent part of our population, seniors. It 
reduced the poverty rate dramatically so that seniors are no longer the 
poorest demographic of our population. Regrettably, children are, and 
we need to do better than we have done there.
  Mr. President, it is clear that some of these radical proposals to 
privatize Medicare and turn it over to the insurance companies, 
privatize Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street, to do this 
chained CPI that will reduce the cost-of-living adjustment, because 
some egghead in some think tank in Washington, probably funded by Wall 
Street and insurance companies, thinks it is a great way to extract a 
few more dollars from seniors and do whatever they do with more dollars 
in the Treasury--it is pretty clear what we need to do to get a 
balanced budget, and it is pretty clear what we should not do. We can 
all work together and get to that point.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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