Date: 2005-04-21
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Thank you so much. Congressman MEEK. We are continuing to try to educate our generation and other generations about the significantly negative impact that privatizing Social Security would have on them. As much as the President. as you have outlined. would like to lead people to believe that privatization is not going to harm people 55 and older. and there is going to be this amazing panacea. this incredible windfall for our generation and for supposedly savvy investors that are from our generation. we know differently. What we have been trying to do as the 30something Working Group convened by Leader PELOSI is to try to separate fact from fiction. To follow up on some of your really excellent descriptions of what the kind of money we are talking about really means for people. you just talked about $5 trillion and what $5 trillion. which is what the Presidents privatization proposal would cost and add to the deficit in the next 20 years. what that would mean. what we could do with $5 trillion instead of ballooning the deficit. I was just elected. I am a freshman Member of the Congress. We have had an opportunity to work together over the years. I am still definitely in learning mode. and I have got a learning curve. One of the things that I have noticed in my learning curve is that when you go from being in the State legislature like we were where you are dealing with billions of dollars. with a B. to the Congress. when you are dealing with trillions. with a T. it is hard for anyone. Members of Congress. Members of State legislatures and average citizens to really grasp what that kind of money is. No one deals with trillions of dollars. The current budget deficit is more than $7 trillion. It is $7.7 trillion. And what the gentleman just described. the Presidents privatization proposal would add another $5 trillion to that. So let us just take the $7.7 trillion that is included in the projected deficit now and try to help people get their minds around what that is. If we took $7.7 trillion and can pile enough $1 bills. and there are actually people that figure these things out. on top of one another. it would reach the moon and back. The Moon is 93 million miles away from here. I am pretty sure that is right. 93 million miles away from here. So that is two stacks of $1 bills that would reach the moon. and that is how much our deficit is. We would still have almost $6.5 billion left over. With that money. after traveling to the moon and back. we could make 1.329 stacks of $1 bills that would reach up into the stratosphere. however high that would go. There is a really instructive Web site that the Department of Treasury has. and I think it would be helpful for people to know what that Web site is. It gives what the current deficit is. and it also gives what is each Americans share of that deficit. It is a ticker and it is constantly changing. But that Web site is www.house.gov/budget democrats. And they can get access to the U.S. Treasury Departments Web page with that information. if they sign on to that Web site. it will link them right to that information. The national debt as of April 21 is $7.782.705.281.978.34. We could really improve the quality of peoples lives with that kind of money. And the direction that this country has been going in is really disturbing. When I go home and talk to the people that live in my community in Broward and MiamiDade Counties. and we represent both of the same counties in South Florida. it does not matter whether I talk to people who consider themselves conservative. people who consider themselves moderate. people who consider themselves liberal. After the events of the last few weeks and the concerns that people have over the deficit. their share of it. this privatization plan which the President is suggesting would pull the safety net of Social Security out from under people. People are really starting to say just hold it a second. we need to get this train back on the tracks and start going in the direction that most people are comfortable with. And I think we really need to start encouraging people. as we have been doing. to raise their voices to help get that train back on the tracks. because it is moving so far to the right even for people who consider themselves on the right. even people like that are coming up to me and telling me they are disturbed. So I just wanted to share that illustration with people. We have talked often about the impact that privatization has had. and we had been on a break and we were not able to spend time during our 30something hbur. We did not have a 30something hour last week because of votes. So I think it is important. and I am not sure if the gentleman already talked about it. the impact that privatization would have on different categories of people. Particularly as the 30something Group. we want to explain how it would hurt young people and working families. The cost of privatization would just explode the national debt. which we have been talking about. but what it means beyond exploding the national debt is that people who collect Social Security would literally experience a 46 percent cut in their benefits. There has been this portrayal by the President on his 60day tour of the country to try to sell this plan. which I know the gentleman outlined and talked about. how they restrict access to their town hall meetings and we let anybody come and we are willing to take on the people who stand up and actually ask questions that are not the same as the position that we take in our town hall meetings.