[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2392]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           CONGRESS OF CLIFFS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of talk of cliffs here in 
our Nation's Capital. We have fiscal cliffs that we faced with the debt 
ceiling. There was the sequestration cliff. We had, obviously, the 
cliffs surrounding the government shutdown.
  This week, we face a Homeland Security cliff. Because our Republican 
friends have been unable to reach agreement and have held hostage the 
budget of the Department of Homeland Security, we face a situation 
where we will either shut down those operations or, hopefully, people 
will come to their senses and take action. But, again, it is government 
by cliff.
  In March, we are facing the SGR cliff. If the government doesn't move 
forward to deal with a meaningful solution to the sustainable growth 
rate, we are going to see a dramatic reduction in government 
reimbursement under Medicare to providers.
  And looming in the background--something that we talked about last 
summer because Congress refused to deal meaningfully with 
transportation funding--there will be another cliff May 31 as the 
transportation fund loses its ability to fund. Already, there are 
programs around the country in local and State government that are 
trying to factor in reductions of important construction work that they 
aren't certain they can do this summer.
  Well, we are putting in the background another cliff. It is one that 
will probably not get the attention that it deserves, but one that 
deserves people to focus on because it will impact 11 million of our 
most vulnerable citizens.
  Over the course of the years, there have been opportunities within 
the trust fund that funds retirement and disability, which are 
basically, for most people, synonymous--they are paid for by the same 
tax on our earnings and that our employers pay, but they have been 
segregated into two accounts, one dealing with disability and one 
dealing with retirement.
  Over the history of these two programs they have spent at different 
rates. Eleven times in the past, under Republican and Democratic 
Presidents alike, Congress has moved to shift money from one trust fund 
to another to be able to even it out and not run out of the ability to 
pay benefits. The last adjustment was made in 1994, but the disability 
account was only adjusted for about 20 years.
  At the time, it was understood that there would be a need for more 
action dealing with disability because of a very fundamental 
demographic change: we have a lot more women in the workforce and the 
baby boom generation is moving into the years in their careers where 
they are more prone to disability claims. And, sure enough, that 
projection is right. Around December of next year, we will no longer be 
able to pay full disability payments unless there is an adjustment.
  Well, the fix that has been done 11 times over the years, on a 
bipartisan basis, has been made infinitely more difficult because of a 
rule change that our friends on the Republican side have adopted for 
this Congress. Under what they have approved, it will be impossible to 
make that simple adjustment that we have done time and time again if a 
single Member of the House of Representatives objects.
  This is setting up an artificial crisis. There is a need to adjust 
funding for both Social Security and disability because, combined, in 
about 2033 or 2034 they will not be able to pay out full benefits. That 
is why it is important for Congress to be able to step forward and deal 
with it meaningfully, but it is not something you do in a crisis, and 
it is not something that should be done by picking out the one area in 
which 11 million citizens rely on these for disability payments. It 
should be done thoughtfully and carefully.
  If people are concerned about fraud and misuse, I would suggest that 
my Republican friends look at what they did in the budget process. Over 
the last 3 years, they have cut 7 percent out of the budget for the 
Social Security Administration that could have gone to deal with 
enforcement and that could have gone to deal with fraud and abuse. It 
could have gone to make sure that the program is operating properly.
  Instead, we have set up a crisis to try and force reductions in 
benefits for some of our most vulnerable. I think it is not the way we 
should go. We shouldn't be having government by cliff, but we also 
ought to be dealing with it in a thoughtful and reasonable fashion to 
make the adjustments that make it sustainable.
  In the meantime, the Republican leadership ought to waive that rule--
like they routinely do for things that they care about, like passing 
billions of dollars of unfunded tax cuts--to be able to allow the 
rebalancing to occur and the decisionmaking to be made in a thoughtful 
and reasonable fashion.

                          ____________________