# Johnson Makes Case on Senate Floor in Keeping Social Security Intact

Monday, January 31, 2005

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the future of Social
Security. In recent weeks we have heard a lot about the President\'s
intent to establish private accounts under the program. While no details
have been shared with Members of Congress regarding his proposal, the
limited information we have does indicate that the administration will
only push and support a long-term solvency fix if it is married with a
plan to divert payroll taxes to individual private accounts.

Beyond the private account issue, it is unclear what the other details
of the Bush plan will include. I am willing to work with the President
and Members of Congress to improve the long-term outlook of this
program, but the American people need to be clear in their understanding
of the facts. The fact is, Social Security is not in crisis and private
accounts will do nothing to help with the program\'s solvency. Yes, we
do need to think about the future of this program. I am willing to hear
the President\'s thoughts and work with him on this issue, but I will
not support any efforts to dismantle a program that has protected
millions in this country from poverty, and provided a guaranteed benefit
for our most vulnerable citizens in their time of need.

Social Security is the most important social insurance program ever
created by this great nation, and it has provided seniors with the
assurances they need in old age.

In South Dakota, one in five people count on this program to put food on
their table, buy their prescription drugs, and keep the heat running
during the long cold winters. The program protects millions from
poverty, and without it, the number of seniors living in poverty would
rise from 10 percent to 50 percent. This is the mark of a strong safety
net program and we must fight to ensure its longevity.

While in the long-term we do need to find a sound solution to protect
the solvency of the Social Security program, one thing must be protected
now\--the guarantee to retirees that they do not have to worry about
living in poverty in old age, no matter what they made during their
working years or how long they live. Seniors must be given the security
to know to the dime what they will receive under this program, rather
than having to worry about the climate on Wall Street.

Since President Bush began his campaign for private accounts under
Social Security, he has tried to convince the American people that the
program is in crisis. This manufactured crisis is merely fiction and
when you begin to look at the real numbers, you learn very quickly that
his numbers just do not add up.

The administration has been trying to tell an alarming story in which
the program is broke in 2019. Reality tells us that in 2019 we will just
begin to dip into the \$3.7 trillion dollar trust fund to pay the Social
Security bills and we will be able to draw on that fund for a long
time\--until 2052 according to the Congressional Budget Office.

At that point in time, seniors will still receive 80 percent of
projected benefits, and still more in dollars adjusted for inflation
than what beneficiaries get today. The real fiscal crisis facing our
Government today is not in the Social Security program, but rather in
the Federal budget, which according to the administration will reach a
deficit of \$427 billion dollars in 2005. This is the result of the
irresponsible decisions of the administration that has pushed tax cuts
for the wealthy during time of war and continued to fight to make those
tax cuts permanent. I was alarmed to learn that in fact the entire
Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years is about one-fifth the
cost of the Bush tax cuts if made permanent. Beyond these problems, the
rising costs of our health care programs will continue to threaten our
budget stability. This is the real crisis we are facing right now.

At the end of the day, when you look at the numbers and the financial
outlook for Social Security, we are in good shape for at least the next
50 years if not longer. When I look at the budget deficit today and a
potential crisis 50 years from now, I am more concerned about ensuring
that our Government can continue to pay its bills now and restore fiscal
sanity to the Federal Government so we can honor our commitments in the
near term\--for soldiers in Iraq, for insurance coverage for the poor
and for prescription drugs for seniors.

\[Page: S618\] GPO\'s PDF In the short term, the administration\'s plan
to establish private accounts will actually increase our budget deficit
and cost the Federal Government approximately \$2 trillion dollars over
the next 10 years. He has not indicated how he would pay for that, and
so that number just gets added onto the Federal debt, not even
accounting for whatever privatization will cost us in the following
years. Estimates indicate that this increased borrowing, primarily from
foreign nations\--Japan, China and others\--could potentially double our
publicly-held debt by 2041, further increasing our dependence on foreign
creditors.

Yes, any long-term savings the administration plan might create will be
at the expense of providing seniors and all Americans a guaranteed
benefit.

I do believe that we should at least start a discussion about the
long-term solvency of Social Security and we should explore all options
for addressing this issue. I support encouraging Americans to establish
private accounts only that are above and beyond what we do in Social
Security right now. All of our citizens deserve a shot at a comfortable
life in their old age.

To get there we need to create a sturdy stool\--a retirement security
stool that provides a solid leg through a secure, guaranteed Social
Security benefit; another leg helps protect the health and long-term
health care needs of all people; and a third encourages individuals to
save money for their retirement years, through private accounts,
pensions and other programs. These are the things we should be thinking
about as we look to the future.

So what we have is a Social Security program right now that is solid,
according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, through the
year 2052, through the middle of this century. Even at the end of 2052,
those payments for young people today would actually be higher, adjusted
for inflation, than the monthly payments that today\'s recipients get.
So is this a crisis? No. There is a problem, but there is not a crisis
in the long term for Social Security.

What concerns me is that I think some of the proposals I am hearing
about have more to do with ideology, more to do with trying to move the
Government away from providing that safety net than it does to actually
solving what problems that may exist.

I believe our seniors in South Dakota and across this country deserve to
have a Social Security program with a defined benefit, that they will
know to the dime what it is they are going to get when they retire, and
that it is not contingent on whether the market had a good year or bad
year in their runup time prior to their retirement. That defined benefit
ought to be the cornerstone, ought to be the foundation, of every
retirement. Whatever else happens, they should know that will be there,
and that it does not involve a gamble in the stock market.

I believe people ought to be saving more; that they ought to be provided
better mechanisms to set aside money which they can count on that will
be over and above Social Security, that will augment Social Security. I
think we need to have a good discussion about IRAs and 401(k)s and other
kinds of pension mechanisms that will allow for private savings to
augment Social Security.

But at the end of the day, the best thing this Government can do for the
long-term solvency of Social Security is to get our annual budget into
equilibrium so we can get back to where we were only 4 years ago\--with
budget surpluses rather than utilizing Social Security surplus dollars
for the ordinary expenses of Government; and, that we put ourselves in a
still stronger position midway through this century to make sure every
American gets the benefits to which they are entitled and which they
expect to have.

I look forward to working with President Bush and with my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle on ways in which we can assist with the
near-term crisis in Medicare, Medicaid, health care, the near-term
crisis in terms of the budget deficit which our Nation faces, and the
longer term problem that we have with Social Security, but in so doing I
will not abandon the underlying philosophy of every American having a
defined benefit program that will be the foundation of their retirement
plan and on which they can, in fact, count.

I look forward to a constructive and positive debate. Doing nothing is
not the solution. But concocting false crises with remedies which
actually make a situation worse than it is now cannot possibly be the
road that this Congress, this Senate wants to go down.

I yield the floor.