Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, that is drawn up with the counsel of the Social Security Administration whereby we do exactly what the distinguished Senator from Wyoming would like to do. We get the interest. We allow the Government to buy our Social Security moneys and give us the Treasury bills. Then each month, at the first of the month, we transfer that same amount of money back into a trust fund to be spent on Social Security, and only Social Security. I yield the floor. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming is exactly right. We have to do something. That is what we did. We say this charade has to stop. We are really looting Social Security while we say we are trying to save it. As a result, we have gotten Social Security into a tremendous debt. We have savaged the fund. Now everybody comes to say they want to save Social Security. That's why I put in the bill S. 605. We will introduce it. I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record as if delivered right now.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Then we apply it using these trust funds to pay down the debt. That is what we have been doing, by any and every other program, whether it is a tax cut, whether it is defense spending, whether it is disaster in the farm areas, whatever it is. That runs up the debt. When you pay down the debt, you get to the unified deficit. That is what they have all been bragging about--how the unified deficit has been coming down and we have a surplus. We don't have an actual surplus. We spend $100 billion more than we take in this year-- $100 billion more than we take in this year. But yet we say we have a surplus, because it is unified, because we have used Social Security to pay down the public debt.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is exactly right. It is a Social Security piggy bank. That is the whole point I am trying to make--the same point the Senator from Wyoming is making--that we have been robbing the Social Security piggy bank, as I show you here, and other banks, incidentally, whereby this year we owe Social Security $857 billion. Isn't that correct?

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Does the distinguished Senator find that Social Security has caused the debt that we are talking about paying, whether it be public, private or otherwise?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, in 1999 we have a $126 billion surplus; in 2000, a $137 billion surplus; and then out into the year 2009, a $217 billion surplus. We contemplated that at the time of the enactment of the Greenspan Commission and said we are going to build up, like a good, responsible insurance company, a reserve so that we could take care of demands of the baby boomers in the next generation. If we said, at that particular time, Mr. President, that the money is going do be spent for any and everything, as the Senator from Ohio and I have just been discussing, we would have never voted for the payroll tax. You could not have gotten a vote except to save Social Security at that particular time. And we contemplated a reserve fund. Instead, they got all of these super-duper plans to solve the baby boomer problem; when the truth of the matter is, the big thing to do--and it almost puts it back solvent--is quit looting the Social Security trust fund for debt caused by any and every other program but Social Security. And one final point: The lockbox, in other words, with this particular measure, gives everybody the key but Social Security. When you say, pay down the public debt, you are paying down the debt caused by any and every other program, whether it is entitlement, discretionary or defense. That is the debt. Because it is not Social Security's debt. I wish they would pay down the $857 billion they owe Social Security. But they said, pay down the public debt. That increases the Social Security debt. The debt increases, as shown for the next 5 years by the Congressional Budget Office. The debt increases, interest costs increase. We are getting by now, but if we go back to the regular order of business economically in this country, we are really going to be savaged. And when they say honesty, what really frustrates the people who oppose this amendment is the honesty of it--I don't want to say the dishonesty, but the incorrectness of it. This amendment ought to be withdrawn. It actually continues what we have been doing that got us into this particular fix in formalizing. And they know it is formalizing and dignifying the savaging of the Social Security trust fund. I thank the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin for his indulgence. I yield the floor. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Exactly. I agree. You are exactly right on that score, and you and I have the same intent. But I am trying to explain the best I can. All you have to do is read the language. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, that a document titled ``The Social Security Surplus Preservation and Debt Reduction Act, Summary of Amendment,'' dated April 20, 1999, by the majority staff be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That said, you could not use Social Security in a unified budget; namely, you could not use it for any spending programs, tax cuts, and everything else. But they ignored it, since it was only a budget law and we did not make it a criminal statute to lock up the Congress or lock up the President of the United States for doing it. It has been totally honored in the disobedience thereof. We have not done it. Now I work with the administrator of Social Security. I want to show this to the distinguished Senator. It is S. 605, and it puts the money over in Treasury. You said you wish we could put it in Fort Knox. I can change that if the distinguished Senator would cosponsor it. We will say put it in Fort Knox, not to be spent for any purpose other than Social Security. It can be done. The dilemma we are in is, section 201 of the original Social Security Act says to use those moneys to buy Treasury bills or Government securities. Don't leave the money, then, with the Government when you buy that security. Count that same amount of money to be transferred back into the Social Security trust fund. Thereby, you have the money and you have also earned the interest each month. That is the way to do it, under the counsel of the Social Security Administration. I have checked it with other lawyers because I had been frustrated. I thought we had a lockbox. Oh, boy, Senator Heinz and I talked about the lockbox back in 1990, and President George Bush, on November 5, signed it into law. That is the law today. That is reiterated in this amendment to S. 557, on page 3: Congress reaffirms its support of the provisions of section 13301. But then on page 10, they spend it. What do they spend it for? For debt. Who caused that debt? All other programs, all programs other than Social Security. Social Security does not cause public debt, it is caused by other programs. That is how they get around the nuance of spending it. What we have, I say to the Senator, is a lockbox that everybody has the key to except one group--the Social Security folks. When you pay down the public debt, you can spend it for everything because that is what causes the public debt. That is why I was a little taken aback-- you try to talk politely on the floor, and my distinguished friend from Idaho said he was really worried about the honesty of this thing. You don't want me to get up and holler about the dishonesty, because I know the intent of the distinguished Senator from Michigan who offered it is good. I would not accuse him of being dishonest. But it is inaccurate, I can tell you that. It is totally, totally inaccurate to say that you have a lockbox. It is misleading when you use the expression ``pay down the public debt.''

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is what I want to say, exactly. And I think it is a very sound law and I am not trying to repeal it. I am trying to carry out its intent. That is, we reap those benefits like any other Treasury security. Mr. President, there is not any question we are in a dickens of a fix. The CBO predicts that at the end of 1999 we will owe Social Security $857 billion; in the year 2000, it will be $994 billion that will be owed to Social Security. I want you to get the feel and the picture of exactly what is coming. They are talking like this is the only way to do it. This is the only way to absolutely savage and destroy Social Security. They want to continue to do it formally with this particular amendment, because this amendment, by the year 2001, paying down the public debt with the Social Security surplus, we will owe Social Security $1.139 trillion. Extrapolating it on out, by the year 2007 we will owe Social Security, paying down the public debt, $2.205 trillion; and on the 10th year out, the year 2008, we will owe Social Security $2.417 trillion. There is where we are going to be faced, before we get to the point of the year 2012-2013, where they said the interest costs then are going to have to be consumed and not earned in order to make the payments. And by 2022, we will be totally out of money. By that time it will be about $4 to $5 trillion. But just in the short period, by 2008, they are talking about all of this going up and how we are paying down the public debt over the years, we are increasing the Social Security debt, all under the auspices and policy of saving Social Security. That is what this Senator is trying to ram home. This is not saving Social Security. This is spending Social Security, putting it in a deep hole, totally in the red, and there is nobody in his right mind going to come and start trying to raise taxes for $2.417 trillion. That is the course we are on with this particular amendment. That is why the Senator from South Carolina is exercised. We have several problems. One, of course, is to save Social Security. The way they do it is to continue to pay down the public debt with this particular amendment. It uses the Social Security surplus to reduce the debt held by the public. That is exactly what we have been doing, and now we want to formalize it. In essence, in paragraph 1 of the amendment, they reaffirm section 13301 saying that you cannot do that, and then in a further paragraph on page 10, they say that is what we can do. I remember, Mr. President, when I was the Governor of South Carolina, we had a contest. We were cleaning up the insurance industry. We had the Capital Life Insurance Company. They were looking for a slogan. We came up with the winning slogan: ``Capital Life will surely pay if the small print on the back don't take it away.'' That is exactly what we have in this amendment. They are trying to say, ``Oh, no, we're not changing the law at all. We have the very same thing. We are doing it exactly the way it has been done over the years.'' This is a long amendment: This title may be cited as the ``Social Security Surplus Preservation and Debt Reduction Act.'' Then, it cites a finding. In the finding, Mr. President, right in the very beginning, page 3, section 1, it says: (1) Reaffirmation of Support.--Congress reaffirms its support for the provisions of section 13301 of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 that provides that receipts and disbursements of the social security trust funds shall not be counted for the purposes of the budget submitted by the President, the congressional budget, or the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. That is to keep the money in Social Security. But if you turn to page 10, it has a very tricky clause in here. It is called ``calculation.'' They were calculating when they wrote this one: After the Secretary determines the actual level for the social security surplus for the current year, the Secretary shall take the estimated level of the social security surplus for that year specified . . . and subtract that actual level. When you subtract that actual level, you pay down the public debt. That is where they satisfy we are going to use Social Security trust moneys to pay down or reduce the debt. Fine business. It is reducing the debt for any and every program in Government, whether it is entitlement, discretionary, defense spending, or whatever, for any and every debt caused by every and any program other--other--except for Social Security. That is what gets me. Then they say every nickel is going to be spent, every penny is going to be spent, lockbox, nobody can touch it, you can't get to this money for any tax cut or for any spending programs or anything else, but you can get it for the debt caused by tax cuts, for the debt caused by spending programs. That is exactly what this amendment does. I think it ought to be withdrawn, because Members should not want to be in a subterfuge situation of this kind trying to save Social Security and actually savaging the program. Mr. President, I got into this debate with the Office of Management and Budget when they used the word ``surplus.'' There is no surplus. We can see from another chart that as of the year 1998, the expected deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office--and this is the most recent April 15 figure--is $109 billion. Then 1999, $105.2 billion. They expect on the current policy--current policy is not $17 billion to $18 billion for military pay; it is not $6 billion more for Kosovo; it is not the caps being busted; it is really, since we already spent $12 billion last year and already busted the caps in this year's budget, $21 billion. We are looking for $32 billion there. We ought to pocket right this minute over $50 billion. The task of the Congress to keep current policy to only get to a deficit--again, next year on the 2000 budget of $91.8 billion, Mr. President, we have to start cutting programs some 50 billion bucks. That is not in the cards at all. My friends on the other side of the aisle who came and said, ``Look, what we want to do is get rid of the Department of Education,'' now say, ``What we want to do is increase spending for education,'' because education, we found out in the political polls, is a very important issue in the Governors' races. All over America, everybody is interested in education. So now we want to increase spending for education, and instead of abolishing the Department, they are looking at election 2000. So they say, ``What we are going to do is actually increase money.'' You can see at a glance that we are in trouble there. The deficit, under current policy, continues to go up, as you can well see by the gross Federal debt on page 38 of the most recent economic and budget outlook fiscal years of the Congressional Budget Office. They see that the debt continues to go up in the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. And then by the year 2006, the actual debt will start coming down. We will actually get in more money. We will spend less, for the first time, than what we take in. Right now, our dilemma is that just with current policy and not cutting $51 billion, we are going to have a $91 billion deficit. And if we do not cut some $50 billion from the spending programs to take care of the military, Kosovo, and the particular targets set, then we are going to be back to about $140 billion. We had a good record in 1993, and it was not Greenspan. I keep hearing how the people out there did it. No; we sweat blood and tears. We voted to increase taxes on Social Security. I hear about all the tax cuts. Where is the tax cut to reestablish the moneys back to Social Security? They have given that up. The Senator from Texas said they were going to hunt us down in the streets and shoot us like dogs with that thing. Senator Packwood stood on the floor and said he would give you his house if the program worked. Congressman Kasich, chairman of the Budget Committee on the other side, said he would change parties. The stock market has gone over 10,000. Still we have the lowest inflation, lowest unemployment rate, business confidence, what have you, and the program is still working. Greenspan has not had anything to do since 1993. He just sits there as a sage and talks about some kind of increased excitement or whatever else, however he phrases it. Actually, he just lets our particular program work, and we are proud of it. The deficit has been coming down each year. Now under this amendment, you can bet your boots that you are spending Social Security to pay down the public debt. While saying you are trying to save it, you actually are going to increase the debt. That is how the CBO figures show it. That is what has been done over the years. That is the current policy. And this particular amendment does not change it. It is just fancy language to come about and try to get credit for ``100 percent.'' The rhetoric is correct: ``100 percent, every penny, every nickel, lockbox, lockbox,'' everything else. But the actual instrument itself--``Watch what we do, not what we say,'' as the former Attorney General, Mr. Mitchell, said. So what we do have is fiscal cancer. I say that advisedly, Mr. President, because everybody in America should understand that this year we are going to waste $356 billion in interest costs on the national debt. That is money spent for nothing productive. And when you do that, you really are taxing the people. If you could start paying down that debt--not the public debt, because when you pay down the public debt it increases the Social Security debt. It is like two credit cards, of course, having a MasterCard and Visa card, and you want to pay down the MasterCard, the public debt, with your Visa card, the Social Security card. So as you pay down what they can see, and what the stock market loves--because they do not want the Government, with its sharp elbows, coming into the market running up interest rates, crowding out corporate capital, maybe causing inflation, and otherwise, slowing the economy, actually paying its bills. There is no free lunch. What happens is, your interest costs go up, up and away, as this particular chart shows. Back when we last balanced the budget, Mr. President, under President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the debt was less than $1 trillion. And the interest cost for 200 years of history and the cost of all the wars-- the Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam--the interest cost of 200 years of history and all the wars, the interest cost was only $16 billion. And since that time, without the cost of a war, it has gone up to $356 billion--think of that--$340 billion more that we have taxed the American people that we have to spend. ``Government's too big,'' is the charge about tax cuts. ``The Government is way too big.'' What is too big is the waste that has been caused by this political rhetoric and litany going on about ``the Government's too big; therefore, we need a tax cut.'' What we need is a tax increase. Can you imagine a Senator saying that on the floor? I am like the Senator from Michigan. I do not think too much spending cuts are going to occur to take care of this particular problem for the simple reason we had 8 years of President Reagan cutting spending, we had 4 years of President Bush cutting spending, we have had now another 6 years of President Clinton cutting spending-- that 1993 Act cut spending $250 billion, and in fact it was way more than what we thought. As we went into the different programs, we increased taxes $250 billion, which really amounts to about $310 billion. And we taxed the upper brackets, we taxed Social Security, as I have just described, but we got the economy going, and we started bringing the deficits down; but the debt kept going up because we kept spending Social Security on the public debt. That is how the debt has continued to go up, up and away on the Social Security. And the national debt has gone up. And it is fiscal cancer. You cannot give a tax cut if you are not paying your bills. You do not want to cut your revenue. You do not want to increase spending. Everybody agrees with that. But one way to make sure your debt continues to increase, which means the waste of interest costs continues, is a tax cut. But that is political jargon. We had that debate last year. And the distinguished colleague that I had opposing me, he wanted to have a tax cut. I said, let's pay down the debt. And we had put in a plan--I think the distinguished Presiding Officer should remember this because it was bipartisan. We had a conscience back 10 years ago. In 1988, we met in the Budget Committee, and you could see this so-called supply side--I wish my friend, Jack Kemp, was here because we would have a good debate. I will not describe that bus wreck that Senator Dole would always talk about, the bus going over the side--a bunch of supply-siders. He said that was the good news. He said what was the bad news was one empty seat. We were just causing the debt to go up, up. By the way, that is in the Congressional Record. That is not off-color by the Senator from South Carolina. I will get it out of the Congressional Record and show it to you. That is one reason I think Senator Dole lost. Because he and I worked on cutting down the debt, cutting down the spending, and then he went for a 15-percent across-the-board tax cut knowing that it was not any way to pay the bills and cut down the debt. But in any event, we realized, Mr. President, that we had to do something. So in the Budget Committee, in 1988, I presented a value- added tax, a value-added tax of 5 percent, each percent raising about $35 billion, for about $185 billion. The distinguished Senator on the floor just momentarily asked, What are you going to do with the money? I say, put it in trust to not be expended except on reducing the deficit and debt. ``Reducing the deficit and debt,'' that was the language. I had Senator Armstrong from Colorado. I had Senator Boschwitz from Minnesota. I had six other Democratic Senators. We had eight Senators vote for that, and I appeared before the Finance Committee, and they quietly told me--they said, If we could have a secret ballot, we would pass it in a minute because we have to start doing it. I even wrote my friend, President Bush, and told him I would be glad to head up the Budget Committee effort and everything like that if he was really doing it. He said now is not the time. I will show you the letter. But we have been trying our best. If we had a VAT here, a tax increase allocated to the deficit and the debt, it would not only start paying it down, it would immediately remove about a 15- to 17-percent disadvantage of producing in the United States of America. Now we have all of these different commissions on competitiveness and productivity. Every industrialized country has a value-added tax. Canada has one. Japan has one. In Europe the average is about 17 percent. And what we did is we brought the expert, Van Canosom was his name, from Holland, who had worked on both the Canadian and the Japanese, as well as the United Kingdom VAT. And he helped in an appearance before the Finance Committee. What we pointed out, in addition to paying down the debt, if everybody really wants to pay down the debt, we could also reconcile what you saw in the morning paper--$310 billion this year in deficit in the balance of trade. It went on to say that the economic experts were worried because we were consuming more than we are producing. The policy is not to produce in the United States. We are not competing really with the Japanese, really with the Mexicans. We are competing with ourselves. If you have a manufacturing plant, and 30 percent of your volume is your labor cost, you can save as much as 20 percent of the volume by moving your manufacturing to a lower-wage, offshore country. So if you have $500 million in sales, you can move to that low-wage, offshore country your manufacturing--just keep your executive office and your sales force in the United States--and immediately, before taxes, you make $100 million; or you continue to work your own people and go broke, because your competition is moving like gangbusters just over and fast. The only industries--as a former Governor I was in that game of industry attraction-- we are getting in South Carolina and in the South are foreign manufacturers who are trying to get into the American market, the richest market in the world. That is what is really happening. We are not getting any expansions. On the contrary, the already instituted manufacturer is moving, like textiles, with NAFTA. We have lost 30,000 jobs since NAFTA in the little State of South Carolina. We have Ambassador Barshefsky. She is worrying about bananas. And then I hear about the WTO with China, the People's Republic of China. I notice my friend, Tom Friedman, wrote an article that we had everything to win and nothing to lose. He doesn't understand there is a nonmarket economy in the People's Republic of China. Whereas, yes, we can bring a steel dumping case in here and have legislation already passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, now before the Senate. The bill is at the desk, and we are ready to pass it. We could do that on our own. Join the WTO and you are bogged down in bureaucracy. You won a little vote. Cuba will cancel you out in the WTO. But he doesn't see anything wrong. We are trying to maintain our economic strength. The security of the United States of America is like a three-legged stool. The one leg is your values as a nation. We dedicate ourselves, again, in Kosovo and Bosnia, Somalia, feed the hungry and everything. America is the envy of the world for its values, individual rights, equal rights, freedom of all mankind. The second leg is the military, unquestioned, the superpower. The third leg economically has been fractured over the last 50 years intentionally. We did it with the Marshall Plan. We sent over the expertise. We sent over the best machinery, and we won. Capitalism has generally prevailed in Europe and in the Pacific rim over communism. So we are proud of that. But now, as we try to build back our economic strength, we are spending like gangbusters. Our job policy program in this country is to get rid of all the jobs, send them all overseas. We are talking about the rich getting richer on the stock market, but we are actually eliminating the middle class in this country. So, yes, if you want to pay down the debt, I will be glad to work with someone on the other side, because that is the only way to get any legislation passed. It has to be bipartisan. If I can find somebody on the other side who is willing to take the risk, we can debate it. It might not pass this year, but then we have next year and maybe we can pass it next year. But somehow, somewhere we have to start paying the bill and quit running up deficits, politically describing them as surpluses in order to reelect ourselves. That is the biggest phony activity that is going on, the worst political charade. And then we wonder why, for example, we don't have the public's confidence. Mr. President, I got with Ken Apfel out at the Social Security Administration, because I was encouraged at the beginning of the year. I heard the President say he was going to save Social Security. And then, of course, he was only going to save 62 percent. He was going to spend 38 percent. And to be candid with you, the 38 percent was what he had been spending all along. The 38 percent now amounts to the $50 billion that he was spending when he first took office in 1993. So he was getting the same amount of money. The Social Security moneys went up, up and away, as you well know. I heard my Republican friends say, in a 99-0 vote, that we were going to save Social Security, every nickel of it, the distinguished gentleman said. So I introduced S. 605 after the advice of the counsel of the Social Security Administration itself. I can read paragraph 5 to you: Notwithstanding any other provision of law throughout each month that begins after October 1st, 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury shall maintain in a secure repository or repositories cash in a total amount equal to the total redemption value of all obligations issued to the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust funds-- The Senator asked me on the floor a little while ago what we are going to do with it. You are going to comply with the law-- pursuant to section 201(d) of the Social Security Act that are outstanding on the first day of the month. So, yes, complying with the act back in 1935 that we invest the moneys of Social Security in Treasury bills, Government securities and immediately at the first of each month put that money back in trust in Social Security thereby earning its interest, very easily done and absolutely required to the point that if it is not done, it constitutes a felony in corporate America. I guess the McLain family is going to write me and say, please, don't quote my situation anymore. There was one gentleman up there in Detroit, where the distinguished Presiding Officer is familiar with, became the head of the corporation and paid down the company debt with a pension fund and was sentenced to jail. Now, you could find that gentleman, where he is serving, and say, next time run for the Senate; instead of a jail term, you get the ``good government award.'' We put in here, with all dignity, we are going to save Social Security. We are going to have every nickel, every penny spent on Social Security, not on anything else. Here it is. Here is the handout. Using Social Security to reduce the debt. And it is to reduce the debt for any and every other program that you can think of other than Social Security. Social Security hasn't caused the debt. There is a debt; it doesn't pay the Social Security debt of $857 billion. It just allows that to continue to increase the next year to 900 some. If I could get that chart, I would like for them to see that. It goes up, then, to 994, almost $1 trillion, and then at the end of the 5-year period you owe $1.6 trillion and at the end of the 10-year period, you owe some $2.400 trillion. That is paying down the public debt. That is what my colleagues do not want to vote for. Let's keep the conversation and let's keep the debate going so that they all understand. I do not mind voting to kill it, but being in the minority--and I happen to be a minority of a minority, and I know how minorities feel and have to act; they do the best they can. Some would say I am taking an inordinate amount of time. Well, I have been trying to get time on the budget, but every time they get the budget, they control the time. I was going to have 20 minutes when we passed the budget resolution. They got me down to 15 minutes. They got me down to 10. Then when they said I could have 5 and got up to talk, they said, no, you only have 3. So how can you explain the facts of life? We do have fiscal cancer, and this amendment continues to spread the cancer. You pay down the debt with Social Security moneys so that not every penny goes to Social Security, not every nickel goes to Social Security, but every penny and every nickel goes to any and other programs that have caused debt. Now, that is running the debt up in Social Security, all trying to save Social Security, trying to pay a worthy cause, trying to pay down the debt, another particular worthy cause. Let me make a proposition to the distinguished Presiding Officer. I know he is conscientious about this particular initiative, so if you really want to pay down the debt, we can go in with a VAT. I know he is for tax cuts. Maybe we can put in a 5-percent value-added tax and cut the payroll tax. It is very, very interesting, because all of these tax cuts, we need. The Government is too big. The Government is too big, so let's cut our revenues, but do not cut the working man's payroll tax, the fellow who is keeping the country together by the sweat of his brow. No, take the super rich where they have $10,000 in the stock market and give them a capital gains tax cut. Take the other rich who have money so they can get a write-off to go to college. Take another group and say, what you need is not to inherit these millions so you can sail around and join all the country clubs and drink up all the liquor and just have a happy time; let's have a reduction in the estate tax, all of these things, never saying cut the payroll tax. What is causing the surplus? What is causing the surplus they never get to. They do not have a conscience. I know that the distinguished Presiding Officer has a conscience, and maybe he will join me. If we can, you have to give a little in order to get a little, I understand, in this political game. I am ready to put a value-added tax out right and allocate it in Treasury like we tried to do back in 1988, but I will try it again here in 1999. But in order to get some votes, since they are interested in giving tax relief, we can get an offset, a certain amount of the payroll tax, a 5-percent cut in the payroll tax, 5-percent value-added tax. Once we put that in, then we will really do away with consuming America; we will really start paying down the bills and you will increase the strength of the economy and you will, in essence, be giving a double tax cut to that poor fellow in the middle on the payroll tax. Those are the men and women who really need consideration. If we can do that and stop spreading this fiscal cancer, Mr. President, we can really get this country continuing to move into the next century. But what we are doing now, as we are looking at November 2000--the election--and we have to cut the revenues to increase the debt, all the time talking about we want to pay it down, we want to spend Social Security in order to save Social Security, increasing its debt going into the red, and its instability, and otherwise in trade continue not enforcing our dumping laws, but rather going along with bananas and citrus--they think they have something. I don't know how many banana growers we have and how many citrus growers. I think the citrus comes in a big tanker down in Florida from Brazil. They send a big concentrate tanker in, and I would be willing to wager that the majority of citrus consumed in the United States is coming out of South America, or maybe Mexico. I remember Castro was sending his citrus to Mexico, and Mexico was sending its up here. So it was a foreign aid program for Castro and Cuba all the time with the so- called embargo. What we need is to continue to have a dynamic manufacturing economic strength program where, like Henry Ford said, ``I want to pay my workers enough money so they can buy what they produce.'' That produced and developed the strength of democracy in America, the middle class. What we are doing with this gamesmanship is saying we are going to pay down debt while we increase the debt, and saying we are going to save Social Security while we savage it, and saying we are looking out for the economy, and the Government is too big, while increasing its size and spending for nothing, and increasing the waste, as we give these so-called tax cuts. Mr. President, we are on the wrong road. The state of the Union is not all that good. The country is in good shape, but the Government--if we had a board of directors or stockholders to vote on it, and they knew exactly what was going on with corporate USA, they would run us all off, because it is one grand fraud, a fraud that is intent to deceive. I know the people backing this particular amendment know better. They understand that when they say they pay down the debt, it sounds pretty, but the truth of the matter is that they take Social Security, increasing its debt, taking its money to pay down the debt, but all the time increasing the national debt and increasing the interest costs and increasing the fiscal cancer. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. When you use the expression ``to pay down the national debt,'' or the ``public debt,'' or whatever debt, it is debt caused by spending, or by tax cuts, or both. So you are not using every nickel for Social Security. On the contrary, what you are using is Social Security moneys to pay other debts for any and every purpose but Social Security. I don't understand the distinguished Senator coming along and supporting this. I don't want to see him get in trouble, because I am going to ask the majority leader to pull this amendment down. They don't want a vote on this. What he is saying is that he wants to save Social Security. I have the quotations in the file of everyone. Senator Domenici says ``every nickel'' to be spent on Social Security. Senator Gramm says ``every nickel'' to be spent on Social Security. I come in on the floor, and Senator Abraham says ``every nickel'' to be spent on Social Security. Then when you use the expression ``pay down the debt,'' which everybody wants, I agree with that. But when you use that expression and use that legislation, the amendment, to pay down the debt, in essence what you are saying is you are going to use Social Security, not for ``every nickel'' on Social Security, but for every nickel on any and everything other than Social Security.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record also section 21 of the Greenspan Commission report, Mr. President.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I congratulate the distinguished Senator from Ohio. He got a lot of heat. But what he was trying to do, like we both did as Governors, is just hold the line and make certain that we can save something. On the figures of the Congressional Budget Office, he said 2001, they said 2006, that there would be an actual surplus and we could then pay down the debt. So I voted for the Voinovich amendment, and the distinguished Senator helped me on our amendment. We got 24 and he got even more votes, if I remember. So I congratulate the Senator's sincerity in his endeavor. Let me ask the distinguished Senator the question, when he says the only surplus we have is that of Social Security, that is true, although we have some other surpluses in the military retirement, civil service retirement, and other matters here. But isn't it the fact that the only debt we have is other than Social Security? In other words, Social Security has not caused the Government debt, be it public debt, private debt, or any other kind of debt, because we have been paying off Social Security and enjoying the surplus each year since 1983. Is that not the case? I mean, when you say pay off the debt----

Mr. HOLLINGS. Right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. In violation of section 13301.

Mr. HOLLINGS. You are right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. But I am asking does it cause any debt? Did Social Security overspend?

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is because the Government has taken the money from Social Security?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Held in the trust fund? Let's you and me stop there. Why not hold it in the trust funds? Why spend it?

Mr. HOLLINGS. The reason I do that is the distinguished Senator from Idaho said he was here and voted for the Greenspan Commission report. And the Greenspan Commission report said: Look, as sort of a lockbox, take the Social Security trust funds out of the unified budget. A majority of the members of the National Commission recommends that the operations of the OASI, the DI, HI, and SMI Trust Funds should be removed from the unified budget. You see we contemplated back in 1983 the baby boomer problem. And it is now determined to be not a baby boomer problem, but an adult problem on the floor of the National Government right here in the Congress. I will ask consent also to have printed in the Record the surpluses so they will have the exact figure. But we have the surpluses go up each year. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Social Security trust fund surpluses from the year 1999 through the year 2008, as computed by the Congressional Budget Office.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. How do you pay down the debt with Social Security money, thereby causing a debt in Social Security? Social Security, I ask the distinguished Senator, is not responsible for the debt. In fact, Social Security is running a surplus, a surplus which was created intentionally to help fund the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. So let's both agree that Social Security hasn't caused the debt.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That isn't what it says. ``Every nickel,'' the Senator said, could be used for Social Security. What I am trying to distinguish here, and asking the question, is the doubletalk, which obviously when you say ``every nickel'' used to reform or pay for Social Security or pay down the debt, now when you use moneys to pay down the debt, that is not for Social Security.