Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, limiting debate and blocking all amendments on this question of life and death is all too typical of this House Republican leadership. They would convert the War Powers Act to the ``In War, Powerless Act.'' Through its previous inaction, this House has largely abrogated its responsibility to approve this Nation's involvement in foreign conflicts. Today's action will only prolong that irresponsibility. As a few of us indicated in letters to the President in August and in October of last year, and again on February 19 of this year, authored by the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), there should have been no military action in the Balkans, not bombing, not troops, not any military action until this Congress had given it approval. The Constitution prescribes that no president should commit the lives of our youth and the billions of our taxpayers' dollars in nonemergency situations like this without involvement of the American people, through their representatives in this House. While NATO raids Belgrade, the same Republican leadership proposes to raid the United States' Treasury. They are determined to divert billions of dollars to purposes that have little or nothing to do with Kosovo. They are using Kosovo as an excuse to subvert the budget limits or caps that helped bring us a balanced budget, and which only months ago they swore to uphold. Yet now that this conflict is underway, it would be folly not to consider the facts on the ground. Milosevic is a war criminal, who is committing genocide. No doubt he and his thugs are watching these proceedings as they unfold today in Washington. We ought not to send the wrong message to him or to the other petty tyrants from Iraq to North Korea who may be watching these proceedings. What is wrong, further, with this rule, however, is that it denies us the opportunity to invoke the War Powers Act in the future, as we may well need to do. This rule is outrageous. It ought to be rejected firmly.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I believe it was old Ben Franklin who said, ``In this world nothing is as certain as death and taxes.'' He could have well added, in the present era in our country's life, a third, which is the determination, come April 15, of the Republican Party to resurrect dead issues. We go along in this Congress for months upon months on end and little or nothing happens. Certainly little or nothing happens about simplifying the Tax Code, about having genuine reform. But somewhere, I guess around April Fool's Day each year, the Republican leadership here in the House, they scratch their head and they ponder what simplistic approach to come out with that is already dead, that will not pass, but that will give the American people the appearance that someone is on their side on the tax issue? And so some years it is abolish the Internal Revenue Service while not replacing it with anything; other years like this it is hike up the amount of votes it will take to approve a tax change. In the meantime, the hardworking American taxpayer who is out there, who would like to see a system in place for the collection of the taxes that are necessary to be the strongest and greatest Nation in the world, is out there wondering why the Congress does not get to work with real tax reform, with tax simplification, with meaningful changes that would make a difference in what we all do here come April 15 in paying our taxes. What they are getting instead is most days, most weeks, most months this Congress doing little or nothing about tax issues, until April 15 comes along and they resurrect one of these old dead ideas that they know is going nowhere, in order to give the appearance that they are on the side of the American taxpayer. Let me assume for just a minute that we work to put this sorry idea into the United States Constitution, and I have to pause just a minute there. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) has so ably pointed this out already. It points to one of the other really strange contradictions of this place. When these Republicans came blazing in here with Newt Gingrich back in 1995, they professed to be great conservatives. Well, it is strange what labels they put on themselves, because when you come to the United States Constitution, they are about the most ultraliberal group I have ever come across in my life. They view the United States Constitution a little like the D.C. municipal traffic code. They have got an idea out here to amend it, to edit it, to change it, to alter it, as if our Founding Fathers had little or no sense about the future good of this country. You can mark your calendar now. Come next April 14 or 15, they will be back here with some other idea to wreck the Constitution by putting in unworkable provisions, knowing that they are dead, that they are not going to be approved in the Congress, but that they have some good political cover that they offer in presenting such a proposed edit of the United States Constitution. But let us assume for a moment that we were to adopt this provision. What would the effect be? Well, I think that it would be a great boon for Washington insiders and Washington lobbyists in doing things the way they have always been done here. Because if you can get a special provision of the type that American citizens are so outraged about Washington, a special preference, a special advantage, a special tax loophole written into the Tax Code here in Washington by your lobbyist, so that the people across America that do not have a lobbyist up here, they have to pay a little more taxes so that someone who has got a lobbyist and a fleet of limousines here in Washington can pay a little less, guess what kind of vote it is going to take to eliminate and reform that system if we are ever going to change it? It is not going to take the same simple majority that got the provision stuck in there to advantage some special interest group. It is going to take, not 51 percent, it is going to take two-thirds to eliminate that special interest provision. That is why I call this amendment, as it is offered by its name in fact, by its true name, which is the ``Tax Loophole Preservation'' amendment. That is what it is all about. And some of our colleagues in the Republican leadership, I mean, to borrow from Will Rogers, they have never met a tax loophole they did not like. They think if you get a tax loophole into this Constitution, it is good. If the President comes along and he proposes to eliminate some tax loophole, ``Oh, my gosh, that's a revenue raiser.'' It may be a revenue raiser that facilitates our ability to provide prescription drugs to our senior citizens that are overburdened with prescription drug costs. It may be a tax loophole that closing it will allow us to provide some assistance to working families who may need a child care tax credit. But they see it as a revenue raiser and therefore, by its very nature, a very bad and evil thing that ought to have not half of this Congress plus one but two-thirds of the Congress required to eliminate it. If they pass this amendment, what they will be doing is freezing into the Tax Code all of the various special provisions, advantages, preferences, loopholes that are already there, that America has been complaining about and asking this Congress to do something about from time on end. What is an example of this kind of provision put in place by this very House? It would have become law had not it been brought to public attention. Mr. Speaker, it is one I think this body is very familiar with, though it certainly was not one of its prouder moments. As my colleagues know, many of us are concerned with the problems of nicotine addiction, one of the most serious drug problems we face in this country. There has been great public interest in having some legislation to prevent youth smoking. What proposal did this Republican leadership offer as a solution? A $50 billion tax credit for the tobacco industry snuck into a bill under a title for small business tax relief, and they actually passed that through this House. Fortunately some reporters found out about it being hidden around page 317 of the bill, and we were able to eliminate it. But it is that kind of provision that, if snuck into the Tax Code, we will not be able to eliminate it except by a two-thirds vote. That would be a serious mistake for all of us who recognize the need for tax simplification, tax reform and true assistance to working Americans. Do not approve an amendment that tinkers with our Constitution but would actually set back the reform movement once we get a Congress in place that genuinely wants tax reform and expresses some concern about it on more than one day of the year.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, today Democrats are lining up for reform. We have had enough. We have had enough Republican leadership excuses. We have had enough delay. We want meaningful campaign finance reform. We are here lined up to sign a discharge petition to discharge all of the proposals, by both Republicans and Democrats, for a full and fair debate on the floor of this House. Last year the Republicans delayed as long as they could until this discharge petition was approved. They finally had to bring the bill to the floor, and then they tried to filibuster it to death with amendments. When that filibuster failed, every single member of the Republican leadership, including the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) voted no against bipartisan reform sponsored by Republicans and Democrats, and backed by most every good government organization in this country. With that background, it is very troubling to hear now the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) announce in the first month of his speakership that he would put this vital issue on the back burner. We need an end to obstructionism and some real bipartisan reform.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed Social Security and worked for its passage, the Republican Party was dead set against it. When John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson said that having Social Security was not enough, if there was no health security and advanced Medicare, 90 percent of the Republicans in this Congress voted to reject it. When Bill Clinton was elected President, the Republican Party in this House elected a majority leader, my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), who said of Social Security, It is ``a rotten trick;'' who said of Medicare that he ``resented'' having to be a part of it as a compulsory government program. So I suppose that against that backdrop the American people should take some confidence and some reassurance in the fact that Medicare and Social Security are even mentioned in this budget resolution. They are indeed mentioned in the resolution. When we look to the budget resolution to see whether there is any money to match the promises made, there is not $1 truly set aside for Social Security and Medicare to assure solvency into the future. All that the Republican budget resolution says is that these vital programs can go broke on schedule, which is not much help to the people of this country. The second indication that we get out of this budget resolution of where the heart of the Republican Party is on these critical issues for hundreds of millions of American citizens who either benefit from these programs today or will in the future is to look to the instructions that they include in this resolution. What instruction do they have about Medicare and Social Security? They have one reconciliation instruction, and it is ``Give us our tax breaks.'' They say ``Give us our tax breaks.'' We say save Medicare and Social Security first. Do the fiscally responsible thing; pay down the debt, preserve these valuable programs, postpone the desire to help those at the top of the economic ladder to some future time, and help those Americans who want these systems preserved.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. The consideration of this bill is the story of an overwhelming, but rather hollow, victory, and a total policy failure. This Star Wars scheme is, first, a technological failure, failing one test after another, again and again. This system assumes the capability, as U.S. Air Force General Lester Lyles said, of ``hitting a bullet with a bullet'' in outer space. And indeed, it would be not one bullet, but many bullets, coming down over this entire 50 United States. That would be a challenge even for Superman. Well, the system has failed to do that. It represents more political mythology than technological reality. Star Wars is, secondly a failure for the taxpayer a failure of over $100 billion wasted on this program. And now our Republican friends tell us that for a mere $184 billion more, we can deploy this defective system. They are wrong. It is wrong to assume that if we waste enough taxpayer money, we can purchase absolute security. For indeed, this Star Wars scheme represents a failure also for true national security. It diverts very precious resources away from other military needs and other nonmilitary needs that are at the heart of maintaining ours as the most powerful country in the world. More importantly, this scheme jeopardizes our efforts to reduce nuclear armaments and endangers those agreements we have already negotiated, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Our paramount security goal should be to reduce the nuclear threat, not to raise false promise that we will live happily ever after in the event of a nuclear attack. Forsaking that paramount goal constitutes a tragic failure by this Congress.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. This report is available from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. I am sure they will have it up for many of our young people who are web literate on their website. I know my office will be pleased to supply information, and I am sure yours, as well, to people from your part of this country who want to get more information about how they would be affected. Then I would just add, with reference to what you said about going back to the thirties, I have to feel that one of the reasons that some of these Washington think tank ideologues want to break apart the social security system is that they are so committed ideologically against anything that has government in it. They do not agree with the government highways, they certainly do not agree with government schools. They want to voucher some students out. They will not vouch for public education. They feel if they can tear apart the bonds that have tied Americans together around social security, then they can eliminate any government program. I think it is that ideological fervor, it is the kind of thing I was referring to at the beginning of this special order in the Newt Gingrich Progress and Freedom Foundation, that it was not just about financial returns, but it was about some very distorted idea of freedom; that if you could break apart the social security system, you could break apart anything else. I think when we stand up for social security, we are not only standing for the security of our seniors and our disabled Americans, but we are standing for some common bonds that tie us together; that I have an interest in what happens to your family, you have an interest in what happens to mine; in our retirement, if we are faced with the loss of a breadwinner, if we are faced with an unexpected disability, that there is something there to provide us with a little bit of a safety net in that kind of tragic situation. I know the gentlewoman has some observations on this.

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank both Members for their continuing work on this topic. I would just summarize in these closing minutes and say that the first thing is to put social security first. We say, save social security first. Do not engage in a bunch of new spending programs. Do not dissipate the surplus with some politically-motivated changes in the tax code. Use the resources that are available at this great time in the American economy to see that social security is saved first. Then second, it is a matter of our working towards a bipartisan agreement. I believe that we can do that in a constructive way. We must do that. We should move forward immediately with the President's program and see how we can make it even better to preserve this very valuable system.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, a couple of points there that I think are really important, because I have gotten some of those same kinds of communications. I expect every Member has, particularly from younger Americans, saying, just show me the money and I will do it on my own. One of the things we know from the study that came out today that we have referred to, prepared by a Republican economist who had a leading staff position with House Republicans in this House during the Reagan administration, is finding that every one of those people, the young person that wrote you, the young person that talked with you at a town meeting in Florida, the young person who contacted me in Austin, Texas, every one of those people and every single person alive today is going to come out worse under these experimental plans, according to this simulation, is going to come out worse than if we maintain and strengthen the system that we have right now.

Mr. DOGGETT. We usually think everything is a little bigger and better down in Texas, but in fact the study that you referred to in Galveston, Texas, most everybody there that was left out of Social Security. According to the objective study on it, they came out a looser; did they not?

Mr. DOGGETT. And while the study that we heard about today was a simulation using an economic model by a Republican economist, is there not some experience in some of the foreign countries that have moved to these private systems that they have actually experienced administrative costs of the level that you are referring to?

Mr. DOGGETT. A colleague of ours who was a leader even before coming to this House as a State official in dealing with pensions, retirement security, insurance, is Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota. And I am pleased that you join us this afternoon, also now as the co-chair of our entire Democrat Caucus Task Force on Social Security, and I know you have some thoughts about this ongoing debate.

Mr. DOGGETT. Let me ask you in that regard from your service on the Medicare Commission. Now I have heard some people on our Committee on Ways and Means say that they, as Republicans, would agree with the President to set aside 60-62 percent of future surpluses to take care of Social Security, but they wanted the rest of it, I guess, for various other schemes, and they did not want to focus on the Medicare aspect. If we only do the 62 percent and we do not have any long-term solution otherwise to Social Security and we do not address Medicare, what would be the effect on the health security of our seniors?

Mr. DOGGETT. That is the whole meaning of the phrase ``save Social Security first.'' We save Social Security first, ahead of anything else, and we do it by the very fiscally responsible step of paying down these trillions of dollars of Federal debt that has been accumulated over the last many decades.

Mr. DOGGETT. The gentlewoman from Florida was at this briefing today with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. The Republican economist who did that simulation on these various privatization schemes, his conclusion was that no group in our society would be a bigger loser than women, and that it did not make any difference, well, it makes a difference in degree, I guess, but regardless of income class, regardless of race, regardless of marital status, because of the factors that the two of you have just been describing, women will lose more than any other part of our society if we reject the Social Security system that has served us so well and go off with some of these ideological experiments.

Mr. DOGGETT. Let me, if I might, just on that point quantify, because we had some excellent testimony the other day in our Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security from Marty Ford representing the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities. She pointed out that for the average wage earner, much as the gentleman was saying for the law enforcement officer, for the average wage earner with a family, Social Security that we have today, the insurance benefits, are the equivalent of a $300,000 life insurance policy or a $200,000 disability insurance policy. I think that is the kind of benefit that we are talking about that many people, a small business owner of the type our colleague from Florida was mentioning, an individual employee could not go out and afford to buy that kind of policy. But with all of us working together in this government program, everyone gets that policy of disability insurance and of life insurance.

Mr. DOGGETT. The gentlewoman is saying in Chile if we followed that model, there would be businesses in California, in Florida, in Texas that would be totally outside of the system.

Mr. DOGGETT. We are pleased to have the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) presiding over us this afternoon. And we are going to keep talking to the gentleman and with the gentleman, because we do need everybody from California joining in to help us get Social Security legislation here, a piece of legislation that we can all be proud of that will be there for our retirees. As the gentlewoman from Florida is pointing out, for what I believe is about 16.7 million children and adults here in the United States that are not relying on Social Security as the retirement system but it is absolutely vital to them that Social Security is there for people with disabilities or family members with disabilities. I believe she was pointing out that it does not work that way under this great model that some of our colleagues have been advocating.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has some constituents that he is going to meet with now, but I appreciate his comments and his leadership. I think the kind of participation that Mr. Mueller provides as an economist, as a Republican, is the very kind of Republican participation that we need. He conceded in his comments that he began with a strong ideological predisposition against our current Social Security system, but he was willing to let the facts overcome that ideological predisposition. That is really what we are saying to some of our Republican colleagues who have made these very harsh criticisms of Social Security, to look at the facts; and when they show, as this study that the gentleman referred to, they show that no one alive in the world today would gain from wrecking the system and changing it so much that we would not recognize it, then we ought to try to improve the system rather than to reject it. I appreciate the gentleman's participation. I know that the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. McDermott), one of the few physicians here in the House, serving on the Medicare Commission as well as working on Social Security, has some insight on this issue as well.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. DOGGETT. Or maybe the top 1 percent.

Mr. DOGGETT. Some have suggested that this 10 percent tax cut is just principally designed to help the top 10 percent of Americans.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, over the course of the next hour, a number of Members, Democrats here in the House, want to explore with our colleagues and with the American people our commitment to preserving and protecting and enhancing our Social Security System. It is my belief that Social Security is one of the best programs that ever came out of this House of Representatives and this Congress and this Nation. If we reflect back on the history of this program to a time in this very chamber in the 1930s, a time when most of our seniors were left in poverty, left often in disgrace to live destitute in their final years in this country after having built it into the great country that it is, and we reflect back on that time and compare it to the standard of living available to most seniors in this country today, it is a remarkable development. Over the course of some 60-plus years, thanks to the leadership of the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a Democratic Congress, we have a Social Security System that really is something that all of us can be very thankful for. That was a system that came into effect over very significant Republican opposition, and it took from the 1930s until the 1960s, decades of effort by Democrats in this Congress to move to the second pillar that is so important to the security of our seniors, and that is Medicare. When my fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, signed Medicare into law to assure that those who had some retirement security also had a certain element of health security, nine out of ten of our Republican colleagues in this House, nine out of ten, voted no. They did not believe in Medicare. And so I think it is important, as we begin what I hope will be a bipartisan effort to bring us together to resolve the issues now about Social Security, that we do so in a bipartisan fashion, not bound by our history, but we also must be mindful of our history. And much of the history of the viewpoints brought to this debate about Social Security is really fairly recent. The current leader of the Republican House group, the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), my colleague from Texas, has a far different attitude about Social Security and about Medicare than I have had and that our great President Lyndon Johnson had, and I believe that most Texans have about Social Security. He has referred to it, back in 1984, as ``a bad retirement'' and ``a rotten trick'' on the American people. And he said, just a few years ago, that ``I would never have created the Social Security System.'' In addition to the comments about Social Security, he said of Medicare, after the Republicans took control of this House, ``I resent the fact that when I am 65 I must enroll in Medicare. I deeply and profoundly resent that,'' he said. ``It is an imposition on my life.'' So we know that at least when some of the leadership of the Republican Party here in the House come to discuss Social Security and Medicare, though they profess an interest in the same bipartisan solution that ultimately will be necessary, they have a different perspective about Social Security and Medicare than those of us who come from a party that has made Medicare and Social Security a mainstay of our efforts. Likewise, I was troubled, just after coming to the House here in 1995, to read the banner headline of the newspaper of the Progress in Freedom Foundation. This is the group that was created by our recent Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. It said, ``For freedom's sake, eliminate Social Security.'' And it proceeded in this banner editorial, on the front page of this publication, to say, ``It is time to slay the largest entitlement program of all: Social Security. A more important reason than financial returns for privatizing Social Security is freedom. The government shouldn't be in the business of confiscating people's retirement money and giving them no say where it is invested.'' That is perhaps a perspective that could be subject to debate here, but it is a perspective that has characterized the leadership of this Republican Party. So that when they come and offer a meaningless resolution, like that which the House adopted today, that has various platitudes but really does nothing to accomplish any real reform of the Social Security System, we cannot help but be mindful of the perspective and the rigid idealogy that they bring that is very negative towards Social Security and Medicare. I hope that over the course of this debate we can reflect on some of the, I guess the remainder, the leftovers of this rigid ideology that are continuing to serve to restrict our ability to get meaningful changes in Social Security, to preserve and strengthen it, rather than to reform and wreck it. Now, the leader of our efforts in this regard has been my colleague from California, who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, and I participated with him earlier today, with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a discussion of a new study to explore who the winners and losers are of the various proposals like that advocated by the Progress in Freedom Foundation and the other people that do not really believe in Social Security and want to abandon the system of the last 60-plus years, and I wonder if my colleague from California (Mr. Matsui) might focus some attention on the significance of this particular study to our ongoing discussion of Social Security.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, it has been said that here in Washington a promise is never really a guarantee. And so the resolution that we have before us today has been self-styled by the Republican leadership as the ``Social Security Guarantee Initiative.'' But it is important for every American to understand that there is no guarantee in the Guarantee Initiative. It guarantees absolutely nothing in the way of any substantive improvement in the Social Security system. I believe it was not a Democrat but a Republican member of the committee that studied this measure, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), who conceded that this resolution, H.J. Res. 32, is solely, in his words, and I quote, ``a political document. It has no teeth.'' No teeth, indeed. I would suggest that this resolution offers less promise than an ill-fitting set of dentures. On day one of this Congress, we Democrats proposed a rule to save Social Security first, to see that the surplus was not dissipated, that we utilized it to preserve the future of the Social Security system. That was rejected on day one of this Congress; and, since that time, now entering month three of this Congress, not much progress, a few hearings but not much progress, has been made towards strengthening and preserving Social Security. Instead of meaningful action, as Americans will remember in 1995 our Republican colleagues said they wanted a revolution. We have now come another 4 years, and they present us a resolution. I believe what we really need is a bipartisan solution to preserve and protect and strengthen the Social Security system. What might that bipartisan solution, not a meaningless resolution like we are considering today, what might it include and what might it exclude? We have an excellent idea of that today in a new report. One of the groups that has been working toward a solution of this problem is the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. They turned to a Republican economist, who did a simulation, looking at various proposals to reject the Social Security system as we have known it for the last many decades and substitute for it some type of private system. This study is entitled ``Winners and Losers from `Privatizing' Social Security.'' What this study concluded was that there are many losers and not very many winners. In fact, the conclusion of the study is that, with these various schemes to reject our current Social Security system, instead of to strengthen and preserve it, that every person alive today, in these United States or anywhere else, who is drawing Social Security or could draw Social Security in the future, every person will lose under the various schemes to privatize fully or partially the Social Security system instead of to strengthen and preserve it. The only people who might stand to gain, we were told in this simulation, which fortunately is just that, a simulation instead of an experiment on the American people as some have advanced, but the only people who would gain are a few high-income males to be born somewhere 20 or 30 years from now after the full transition costs to a private system are effected. So with that kind of information now available, it is time to reject ideology and focus on real, meaningful changes in this system that will strengthen and preserve it. Mr. Speaker, I believe this is an important study with important findings. There has been so much held out about how if we had a revolution in Social Security and we rejected the system as we have known it for the last many decades, that everybody would be the winner. But when one looks at the facts, the winners just are not there. Everyone loses if we reject this system and substitute the kind of revolutionary system that some of these Washington think-tank ideologues have been advancing. So I hope we will come together behind some of the proposals the President has advanced to strengthen and preserve Social Security in a truly bipartisan manner.