Charlie Rangel

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Thurman), a member of the committee.

Mr. RANGEL. If the gentleman will yield, I will tell him how this works.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), a member of the committee. (Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. It does not respond to a yes or no answer.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) a member of the committee. (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) our minority leader. (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Earlier in the debate, somebody said the only difference between the bills is that I wanted 100 percent and the Republicans wanted 90 percent. That is not the only difference, because, in this substitute, we take that 100 percent, not just merely put it in a separate accounting system in the Social Security trust fund, as I once supported, but we take it away completely from the opportunity of politicians, Republican or Democrats, and lock it into the Federal Reserve Bank so that it cannot be touched. But I would just like to say, with all of this display of currency on the floor, that we should recognize for those who have the $40, that the 40 bucks was owed to the Social Security trust fund. We have not used the money that has been collected for the trust fund. We have used it for other things. So if Members want to say the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is they want a total commitment to the system and Republicans want a partial commitment, then we may be closer to the facts, because we say that after we fix Social Security first, then we would trigger the exciting and the ever-inviting tax cuts, as my colleagues in the majority have suggested. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant). (Mr. TRAFICANT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), a member of the committee.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), one of the strongest supporters of our Social Security system. (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Adam Smith).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra), a member of the committee.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson), a member of the committee.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself one minute. Mr. Speaker, I had thought under the House rules it was a violation to take the official transcript of a markup or committee meeting, other than a public hearing, that it should not be published or distributed to the public in any way except by majority vote of the committee. But having seen how the majority has waived the budget rules, I suppose you have waived the House rules, and so I am not in violation. Now, Ms. Chesser was asked to respond to the majority, yes or no. Her answer was no. That was the chart we saw. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) then asked her to come back, and he said, I just want to make sure, unless I misunderstood, Ms. Chesser, would you please come back to the table and repeat what you have said. The answer was, it does not affect the money currently going into the trust fund. However, it would make a far smaller amount of the surplus available when there is a bipartisan attempt to resolve the social security's current financial problems, which we hope to do in a bipartisan way. As Members know, we are not in actual balance over the next 75 years. It helps, when we take part of the transcript out and publish it, that we put in the whole amount. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) that I am one of the friends on this side of the aisle, and we support those tax cuts. We just think we ought to save the Social Security system first. In terms of the emergency spending for the poor farmers that were hit by an act of God with floods and droughts, we thought at one time that America wanted to help them. We think that is different than a pre- election tax cut. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I may be wrong, but I thought I heard some sense of partisanship in the gentleman from Texas' presentation on this bill, and I am going to try to restrain myself and try to remind my Republican friends that things that they are talking about today are Democratic concepts. These are concepts that we Democrats have and continue to support. The only difference that separates us today is that we believe that until we have the fiscal discipline to abide by our budget rules that we should have the money to pay for these tax cuts before we cut the taxes. Now I had thought, and probably my colleagues have had a caucus and changed their mind, but the last I heard from my Republican leadership friends was that they were running around the country pulling up the Tax Code by the core. They were pulling it up by the roots. They were saying that the system was too complicated. And they had the majority, and they had the opportunity to fix it, and they came back with a $300 billion bill, which we supported, that was far more complicated than any code the Democrats left them. So let us forget all this talk about flat tax, consumer tax and retail tax. They should say that they would like to be realistic and deal with taxes that most of the people want. But they also have to let the senior citizens know that they have decided that the moneys that Americans have paid to make Social Security solvent, that they are only entitled to 90 percent of it because they have decided to take 10 percent of the money that provides the surplus that was basically there for survivors and widows and disabilities and Social Security to give a pre-election tax cut. Now some people talk about Democrats and the leader of the free world, President Clinton, going into the surplus for emergencies. So what would they have it? That the farmers not get any assistance? Shall we tell our citizens in Puerto Rico that we are not going to help them? Are we going to say to our military, our boys and our girls in the military that are in Bosnia, that they are not going to be helped because we do not touch the surplus? We are talking about a one-shot emergency as opposed to a permanent tax cut, as long as they are in the majority that is. And so let us wait and do what the President has asked and that is to say we support tax cuts, Republicans support the suggestions that the Democrats have. The only difference between the two is we say save Social Security first. Now what is so remarkable about us coming back and in a bipartisan way going to the Social Security Trust Fund and making certain that actuarially it is going to be solvent, and then under the democratic rule it triggers, without us going into conference and without us going into debate, it triggers off the tax cuts, but what it does not do is violate the rules of fiscal responsibility. So I do not know when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer) talks about do not let the politicians touch it. My God, the politicians have to be those who have the majority. They are the ones that have their fingers in the cookie jar that the taxpayers put in the cookies for the Social Security Trust Fund. So I do not know how many votes they have. I do not even understand the politics of their tax bill. All I know is this: that politically I do not see why their leadership would have them to vote for a bill that raids the Social Security system, that the Senate may not even take up, that the President is going to veto and that they know in the bottom of their hearts they do not have the votes to override the veto. So if they want to go back home and be counted among those who cared more about a political advantage in November than preserving the funds for our seniors, they can do it, but it almost frightens me that we are about to lose the rule, because I truly believe, if we are going to show the difference between us and them, this is going to be the issue. So I do not know how many votes they have for fast track, I do not know how many votes that they are going to have for Social Security, but I do believe that if we are going to save Social Security, do not put it in an accounting system and say we are not going to touch it, that we really take it out of the system, off budget, put it in the Federal Reserve, and then we would know not 90 percent but a hundred percent of the taxes are going to be used for what the taxpayers think it should be used for. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), our Democratic Whip.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, if I could have a statement today on this rule which I oppose, it would be to my dear friend and fellow New Yorker (Mr. Solomon). Because the gentleman from New York is leaving this great body, but he leaves with a great reputation as a feisty fighter for all of the things that he has believed in all of his life as a true American and a true Marine. I feel awkward, because having moved to be the senior member of the Committee on Ways and Means, some of the ways I used to think have now been replaced by having the responsibility of not being able to express my liberal ways the way I used to enjoy them before. I would believe that if a surplus was there, spend the darn thing. Put it in education, build some houses, let America's quality of life be a little better. As far as Social Security is concerned, what the devil. If we do not have money for the check, the country is not there, anyway, so forget it. But that is not the way Americans have been thinking. The Republicans have been so good at telling us if you do not have the money, you do not spend it. They have been so good in saying you pay as you go. They have been so good in saying that we have got budget rules, that you cannot even do it without violating the very principles of the House. Yet this rule today would allow us just to waive all of the disciplines that we have learned to work together in a bipartisan way to respect. The whole idea of having a tax cut that you cannot pay for is repugnant to everything I thought Republicans stood for. For those reasons and others, I oppose the rule.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, along with many of my Democratic colleagues, today I am introducing a bill that contains many tax reduction provisions that have long been supported by many of the Democratic Members of this House. I am pleased that these provisions have been included in the tax legislation reported by the Committee on Ways and Means yesterday. The only difference between the bill that I am introducing today and the Committee bill is that my bill actually could become law. My legislation is consistent with the President's requirement that we save Social Security First, and therefore, unlike the Committee bill, it will not receive a certain Presidential veto. I am introducing this bill to demonstrate that our vigilance in protecting Social Security is not just an excuse to oppose tax cuts. We Democrats do not oppose tax cuts. We support tax cuts. Virtually all of us voted for significant tax cuts last year. the 1997 bipartisan tax bill included nearly $300 billion in tax cuts over 10 years and the Democratic Members of this House supported a Democratic Substitute that would have provided even more tax relief for the middle class. Many of the provisions in the Committee bill and in the bill I am introducing today originally were sponsored by Democrats. Marriage penalty relief, 100 percent deductibility for self-employed health insurance premiums and simplifying minimum tax rules to ensure that those promised the $500 per child credit enacted last year will receive it, were provisions offered in the Committee on Ways and Means last year by Democratic Members. Unfortunately, the Republicans voted them down last year. We support fiscally responsible tax cuts, but unlike our Republican colleagues, we do not support using he Social Security surplus to pay for them. Therefore, any tax reductions that otherwise are not paid for will go into effect as soon as we have achieved the President's goal of saying Social Security First. The extension of expiring provisions and the phased-in increase in the Social Security earnings limit would become effective immediately, as under the Committee bill, since both bills pay for those provisions. Also, revenue-neutral and time- sensitive provisions such as the technical corrections and treatment of certain farm program payments would take effect immediately. The Republicans have argued that the projected surpluses are sufficient to both cut taxes and preserve Social Security and that they are reserving 90 percent of the surpluses for Social Security. These assertions simply are not true. The Republicans admit that 10 percent of the surplus is being diverted from Social Security under this bill. Moreover, there is nothing in the Republican proposal that actually reserves the other 90 percent for Social Security. In separate legislation, Republicans say they will ``protect'' Social Security. However, in that bill they merely require the Secretary of the Treasury to make several bookkeeping entries. They do not prevent the Congress from using the Social Security surplus for further tax cuts or further increases in spending. Under their plan, Congress could use the entire amount of the Social Security surplus next year for tax cuts or spending increases and there is nothing in the Republican proposal that would prevent it from doing so. With their bill they already have their noses in the Social Security tent. In this bill we propose to take the Social Security budget surplus truly off-budget so that it will not be spent until Social Security is solvent. This bill would take the entire amount of the Social Security surplus in each fiscal year and transfer it to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be held in trust for Social Security. When we talk about future budget surpluses, we should be clear that we are speaking about projections. Hopefully, the projections will be accurate, but there are many unforeseen events in our global economy. It would be foolhardy to assume that we can predict all of them. That is why no less an authority that Alan Greenspan has warned this Congress that we should not spend money we may not have. Even if we assume the optimistic projections will come true, the so- called surplus over the next 5 years is not really a surplus. It is due to the contributions that American workers have invested in Social Security. It already has been committed to the Social Security trust fund. If we treated those contributions like all businesses treat their contributions to their employees' retirement plans, we would have a $137 billion deficit over the next 5 years and only a $31 billion surplus over the next 10 years, even if the optimistic assumptions prove to be correct. Perhaps spending some of this money would not be so bad if it really was not needed to shore up Social Security. We all know the challenge that Social Security faces as the baby-boomers near retirement. The reality is that all of the money that Congress has committed to the Social Security program is needed, not only 90 percent of the surplus. We are pleased that the Republicans have adopted many of our ideas for inclusion in their tax bill. Those ideas can be enacted this year if we commit to taking action to ensure the solvency of Social Security. Enacting tax cuts now without that condition would violate our commitment to the Social Security program.