The Social Insecurity System

THE SOCIAL INSECURITY SYSTEM -- (House of Representatives - May 12, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the interest of protecting Members of Congress, journalists and the general public, officers of the Capitol Police advised everyone to run for their lives, and we did.

Today, I wish that a Capitol Police officer would have been on hand at the Committee on Ways and Means hearing to shout the same warning.

Run for your lives is the very best nonpartisan advice that anyone can give the American people over the President's plan to create a private insecurity social system.

The President wants the American people to cut Social Security benefits. His proposal would devastate the program, break the promise and destroy the trust made between the government and the American people.

The President wants the American people to accept his word that privatizing Social Security is in the best interests of Main Street and not Wall Street.

The President, amid much bravado, said his plan is on the table and his plan stays on the table, take it or take it. Since the President will not take private insecurity off the table, let us look at what else the President put on the table with his plan.

It is the only guaranteed outcome of the President's plan: senior citizens retiring into poverty. We need only look back in history and revisit the dark and stark reality of our own past.

Americans by the thousands retired into poverty before Social Security was created by President Franklin Roosevelt. They retired into poverty because there was no way to protect them. There was no security, and that is exactly what the President wants again.

The President says he does not read newspapers. How about American history? Can someone in the White House please get him an American history book?

It did not work. He ought to know that. Americans who have worked a lifetime were forced to live in poverty because there was no Social Security. Millions of seniors did not have the money for food, clothing or shelter.

You want to revisit America in 1932? My mother still is alive, thank God, and she would be the first to tell you that 1932 was not good. It was economically and humanitarianly a disaster for America. Millions could not afford to eat. Millions had no home to call their own. Americans did not have a lifeline, much less a safety net. It was a dark and horrifying period of American history.

Why in the world does the President continue ignoring history? He proposes a plan; no, the President demands a private insecurity social system. He says he will listen to any idea as long as it is his.

So, today, the President's water is carried by the distinguished but misinformed chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. I said it before and I say it again: The President's plan for a private insecurity social system is dead as disco. Nobody goes to discos anymore. It does not work. It does not even have those fancy twirling disco lights on the dance floor. The President's plan does not offer real benefits. It offers real cuts.

The President's plan reflects America in 1932, a place with little security and a lot of greed, a place at a time when Americans suffered and lost hope until a great leader renewed a trust with the American people.

A President, in the worst of times, created Social Security to provide every retired American with economic security, guaranteed, something this President wants to destroy.

President Roosevelt created a program that is not Republican or Democrat. It is not east or west. It is not north or south. He envisioned the Nation strong because it defended the weak, stalwart because it valued its people, mighty because it was humble enough to care for the sick and the aged. No one was left behind by President Roosevelt.

This President will leave tens of millions behind in a risky scheme that rewards the greed of Wall Street while it destroys the values of Main Street.

Americans will not be better off with the President's private insecurity social system. Americans will be as vulnerable again as they were at the darkest economic moment in our history. It will be back in the arms of Wall Street.

The President offers no plan and no choice. The President offers only a stark reality: Slash the benefits right now, and he put it right out there a couple of days ago in his news conference; and also cut your bond with the American people; cut the ties that bind us together; destroy the trust and certainty that senior citizens will not retire into poverty because we will not let them. They cannot, if Mr. Bush has his way.

There is only one course open to the Congress and the American people. If the President will not remove the private insecurity social system from the table, then the American people should remove the table. Throw it away before somebody gets hurt. Remove it from America's house because it does not belong there.

We are a Nation of people who want our children and grandchildren to have an opportunity for more than we had. We will be the first generation to expect our children to have less because we planned it that way.

The President wants to create a Nation of people wanting for the basics of food, clothing and shelter. We lived through that once. We do not need to live through it again.

FDR was right in 1935, and he is right in 2005.

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