Mark Sanford

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would like to just touch on a couple of points that I have heard during this debate. The first has been there is too much money spent in politics, or there is too little money spent in politics. I think neither one is actually the case. Mr. Chairman, I think rather what we have is a structural problem in politics that the Shays-Meehan bill begins to address. That structural problem that we have is that we have got diffused cost and concentrated benefit. Our Federal Government, as we all know, is a very big thing. It is $1.7 trillion worth of spending every year. And if we look at that issue of diffused cost and concentrated benefit, as a conservative we can see it in troubling spots. Again, people do not buy votes. I would agree with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), I would agree with the gentleman from Arizona, I would agree with a whole host of folks on that very point. But it does buy influence. It helps in access. The guy that is giving a Member $10,000 is a guy they are ever going to pick up the phone for or open the door to. Again, they cannot give $10,000; that is a rhetorical statement. Take for instance the sugar subsidy vote. That is a classic example. I mean, here is a program that costs the American consumer another $1.2 billion a year in the form of higher sugar prices. It is hardly the kind of thing that I could sell back home in a town meeting. There are always a handful of domestic sugar producers and consequently districts that are affected in our country. Yet all those benefits go down to truly the hands of the few. In the case of the sugar subsidy, we are looking at $60 million a year that goes in personal benefit for instance to the Fanjul family. The Fanjul family, they are not American citizens. They hold Spanish passports, but they are on the Forbes 400 list and they have yachts and helicopters and a whole host of things. All this bill is about is trying to limit their level of access versus the level of access of a person in my district who lives in a very simple trailer in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. I think that that is part of the issue that we are dealing with, not too much money, not too little money, but an issue of diffused cost and concentrated benefit in a very big government. Two, one of my colleagues was earlier holding up both the New York Times and I think it was U.S.A. Today, pointing out how the editorial page in the New York Times was, I think, $85,000; and U.S.A. Today, I think it was $75,000. The point was, hey, they are not controlled in the way they get to advocate a point, but Shays-Meehan would control others. That is a good thing as a conservative. They are not in the business of arguing for ethanol subsidies. They are not in the business of arguing for grain contracts or for weapons treaties. They are not in the issue of government contracts, for that matter. But what you have here is a case when you do want their interests limited, because you do not want somebody trying to sell missiles to China to have unlimited access on that front. The third point that I would make just in the debate that I have been hearing is there has been much discussion, I think I even heard the words verbatim ``we believe you ought to leave the First Amendment alone.'' But the bulk of the people that are suggesting that, and I would say that with all due respect to my colleague from California, would be people that may have voted for, for instance, the religious freedom constitutional amendment last week.

Mr. SANFORD. But in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, they have also held in a different version a separation of church and States than the one that you voted for.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I stand here as a conservative in support of this bill, because I think we all have to ask ourselves, when the Federal Government controls $1.7 trillion worth of daily activity as we go through the year, do we want people to have disproportionate levels of influence? I would answer no. It ties straight to the larger question. That is, if someone gives large amounts of dollars, do they expect something in return? I think the answer is unequivocally yes. Common sense would say if one gives large amounts of money to somebody else that they expect something in return. Tamraz, when asked before the Senate Finance Committee why did he give such large amounts of money, he said because it works. For that matter, the recent movie Bulworth, which some may have seen, talked about Bernard Schwartz and how he and the Loral Corporation had given $2 million to the DNC with surprising effect, because what they had been after, which is a satellite technology transfer, went through. We can come up with lots of other examples. We can talk about Archer Daniels Midland and the ethanol subsidy. We can talk about many different areas wherein a disproportionate amount of influence seems to be tied to money.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and I thank him for bringing this measure to the House floor. Mr. Speaker, if we stop and think about it, our Founding Fathers built our country on a simple concept called freedom. Freedom is the ingredient that they willed for every human soul. Freedom is not something that Nelson Mandela saw for almost 30 years of his life, yet after getting out of jail, rather than constructing a life built around bitterness or built around revenge, he constructed a life built around freedom, around the simple idea of one man, one vote, around the idea of democracy. For that he deserves both our praise and this Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill because it makes sense, and it is an idea that simply grows and expands and fertilizes a debate on saving Social Security that is already taking place in this House. I would suggest that that is a bipartisan debate that is beginning to take place. If we look at, for instance, what John Kerry, Democrat on the Senate side, has said about maybe we ought to look at ways of updating Social Security and taking that 10 percent and making sure that that 10 percent tax goes into something that actually builds wealth, versus what the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) pointed out earlier which is the case for a young 40-year-old, you have to live until you are 89 to get all your Social Security benefits back, or if you are a 30-year-old you have to live until you are 91 to get all those benefits back, that is the beginning of a bipartisan debate. Another thing that says to me this is a bipartisan debate is that Pat Moynihan, a great guardian of Social Security over the years, has said why do we not look at the possibility of letting individuals redirect 2 percent of their payroll tax and put it into their own personal savings account that again begins to build wealth. On the Republican side we look at what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) has said, ``Why don't we look at the surplus and make sure that Washington can't spend the money by rebating that surplus back to FICA taxpayers so that they could begin their own personal savings account.'' Or we have a bill that says why do we not give people below the age of 65 simply the option of redirecting a large portion of their payroll tax into their own personal savings account. Or what Nick Smith or Rick Santorum or Judd Gregg or Rod Grams, a whole long list of Republicans have out there. What this bill does is put those ideas in a bag and allows people to shake those ideas around for a year and then see which ideas make sense as we go forward in this debate. I would say most of all this debate is simply a debate about the American dream, because the American dream is tied to ending a lifetime of work with something other than just memories to show for it. Yet in our system, based on what the trustees have said, is that if we do nothing to address this problem, people will be paying 10 percent of what they earn every day and every week and every month into a system that does not build wealth for them.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on what my colleague from Mississippi was talking about, and that is the surplus. As we all may know, theologians have a thing, a word, a concept, if you will, called original sin, and the idea is from original sin all other sins flow. And when Washington these days begins talking about the idea of surplus, it seems to me that that is the original sin in Washington, because I just have real questions about the idea of us really running a surplus. I have got a question from the standpoint of accounting. I mean, in the President's budget that was sent up to the Congress, it listed in it a $9.5 billion surplus, and yet the national debt would go up by $176 billion. That is the equivalent of saying I am going to pay off $95 on my credit card balance, but my credit card balance is going to go up by $1,700. Mathematically that is impossible, with the exception of anyplace but Washington, D.C. Because in Washington, D.C., if you were to break out the budget, what you would see is $103.5 billion borrowed from Social Security, and as you add up the other trust fund borrowings, it comes to this $176 billion number. That number actually may be a little less than that because the surplus is supposed to be greater, but the point is that is not the way you do accounting back home in South Carolina, or Nevada, or Illinois, or anywhere else. That is not conventional accounting. Too, I think the surplus is somewhat fictitious simply from the standpoint of economy. The $225 billion that plugs the gap from where the Congress was and where the White House was built on the economy continuing to roll ahead, and I have serious reservations on it being able to continue to roll ahead. The third way, I guess, I have questions on the sustainability of the surplus would be simply on the basis of what we send to Washington every year. We are at a post-World War II high in terms of the amount of money that people send in taxes to Washington, D.C. This last year we hit 20.1 percent of GDP sent by hard-working Americans to Washington. Now, that was only met or exceeded basically at the height of World War II. In 1944, we hit 20.9 percent, and in 1945 we hit 20.4 percent of GDP. Other than that, it has been below 20 percent consistently, which means it only takes people modifying their behavior just a little in terms of a spouse working a little bit less or in terms of a worker spending a little bit more time with the family to all of a sudden have us drop below the 20 percent figure. If we did, the surpluses would go out the window. What this means to me as we begin to talk about the issue of Social Security is how do we have security with Social Security? Because what is interesting to me about the Social Security debate, is the President in this very Chamber said at the State of the Union that we ought to reserve every dollar of surplus for Social Security, and yet, given the way the trains have been running in this town recently, it seems to me if $50 or 60 billion comes to Washington, there is a good likelihood that that money will be spent. And if it is spent, it is not saved for Social Security. So I think that one of the things we really ought to begin looking at is the idea of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) of Social Security Plus. Quite simply, that would be taking the surplus money, rebating it back to everybody that pays Social Security taxes, and then letting them put that money in their own Social Security Plus account. The advantage for me of that idea is that by having it in your own account, and we are not talking about a lot of money, about $500, based on the size of the surplus in your account each year, and over the next 6 years, that would be $3,000. But by having that money in your account, Washington cannot reach in and borrow that money. I think we really need to begin looking at that kind of security when we talk about the word ``Social Security'' if we are serious about, A, having every dollar of surplus go toward Social Security, and, B, on the whole concept of protecting Social Security.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this amendment for a couple of different reasons, but the first reason I rise in support is this simple document called the Constitution. What is interesting about this document, I am not a lawyer, I am not a legal expert, but what is interesting about the Constitution is it was written in layman's terms. And when I look here in section 8 and I read that it is the Congress that shall have the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain the Navy, et cetera, it seems to me crystal clear that the Founding Fathers, for some odd reason, wanted the Congress to be involved in the event of war. Now why is that? War is a very messy thing. We have 435 folks over here, we have 100 folks over on the Senate side; it is hard to get agreement on anything. Why would they want us to be involved in that messy process? And I think the reason, quite simply, is the reason of accountability. How many of my colleagues have seen the President of the United States in the local grocery store shopping for a gallon of milk? I mean, maybe if it is some weird press opportunity he is there, but it is not a normal occurrence. And yet, 435 folks clear outside of here every weekend and go back to their Congressional districts. And in fact it was just last Friday that I, along with my five-year-old boy Marshall, went to the Harris Teeter on East Bay Street in Charleston, South Carolina, to get a gallon of milk; and it was there that three folks came up to me and said, you know, Mark, this bothers me about x, y, and z, three different issues that were of concern to folks at home. What the Founding Fathers wanted, the reason they had it here, was they wanted accountability. When body bags come back from a war, they do not come to Washington, D.C. They go to Tulsa, Oklahoma. They go to Topeka, Kansas. They go to Savannah, Georgia. They go to a lot of different places that are represented by the 435 districts in this body. So what I would ask as we contemplate this resolution is that we think about not only the accountability that the Founding Fathers intended but also on how this has been a reasonable and tested idea. The War Powers Act came out of a democratically controlled Congress; and what it said was that through this learning experience called the Vietnam War, at the end of 60 days, or possibly 90 days with an override, but 60 days it is this body that ought to decide on things like war. Without further ado, I rise in support of this amendment. Again, we have had a lot of discussion on Bosnia and on leadership. This would do nothing to Bosnia. It would do nothing to our status as a world leader. But what it would do is preserve this thing called the Constitution and making sure that the President comes here to check out things like war.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because it was just a few weeks ago that the President of the United States in this very chamber said that we ought to reserve every dollar, every penny of a budgetary surplus and put it into Social Security. What was interesting about that to me is that basically what he was talking about, what he was outlining was the larger question of how we are going to save Social Security. In other words, if we take every penny of surplus and put that money where it belongs, which is in the Social Security Trust Fund, rather than borrowing from it, what we have done is we have taken a first step towards saving Social Security. But what that does, because of the way the budget works in Washington, D.C., what that would actually mean would be a pay-down of the national debt, which would be very good for Social Security, but again only a first step. To me what it raises is that larger question of how in fact do we save Social Security. Some people have said, yes, it is a good first step to put every dollar of Social Security tax into the Social Security Trust Fund, but the larger question is, since that does not affect the 70 million baby- boomers that begin retiring in 2012, and since that is ultimately what we have to deal with, what we ought to do is look at cutting current benefits for current retirees. I do not think that that is at all a realistic option. When I talk to seniors along the coast of Myrtle Beach, along the coast of South Carolina, what they say to me is the idea of cutting current benefits is crazy, that Social Security is very important to each of their lives, and that that is not the way you are going to save Social Security. Other people have said, do you know what you ought to do is, you ought to raise payroll taxes on young people. And yet overwhelmingly what I hear from people across my district at home in South Carolina is that that is not a realistic idea, that you can only squeeze but so much blood from a turnip. And what they are saying is that they are squeezed. They are struggling to make a mortgage payment, to make a car payment, to provide for dollars for kids' education, and that the idea raising the payroll tax just is not the way to do it. Other people say the way we ought to look at saving Social Security is by freezing it. In other words, we ought to just fossilize it, leave it alone. We do not touch it. We leave it in a corner. Well, that would be nice. It is something I wish we could do. But the fact, again, is that we have got 70 million baby-boomers that start to retire in 2012. That is no fault of the designers of Social Security. It is no fault of anybody in the past, but is something that is coming our way, and we ought to, rather than simply freezing and looking at the problem coming in our direction, do something about it, which is what the President of the United States had said in the first step being let us reserve every dollar surplus towards Social Security. I think the bigger question, if we are not going to cut current benefits, which is not an option, if we are not going to raise payroll taxes, which is not an option, and if we are not going to freeze, standing in the corner, sort of fossilizing it the way the dinosaurs went, that only leaves one other option for saving Social Security. This other option I think ties straight back to what Senator Bob Kerrey, over on the Senate side, a Democrat, is talking about. He says, you have got to have a real rate of return, a real return on assets, if we are going to save Social Security over the next 50 years. We cannot save Social Security by having it offered to young people today at a suboptimal return. If it is only going to return to them a negative rate of return or a 1 percent rate of return over the course of their lives, we can be assured that Social Security as we know it will disappear over the next 150 years because the consensus in America is not going to be for a sustained rate of return of zero or 1 percent. So I think that the only option in saving Social Security is letting one earn more on their Social Security investment. The trustees have said, if we do nothing, Social Security begins to run shortfalls in 2012, it begins to run, basically run out of money in 2029; that the average rate of return for everybody working and paying into the system is about 1.9 percent; and that for people born after 1940, the rate of return is actually negative. Now, if you earn a negative rate of return, or if you earn a 1 percent rate of return, you do not end up with a whole lot at the end of the one's working lifetime. This idea of rate of return is very, very powerful in people's lives. If you take two 20,000-per-year workers, in other words, one fellow earns 20,000 and another fellow earns 20,000, they both go to work at exactly the same age, say they begin work at age 25, and they work until they are 65. If one earns 1.9 percent on your rate of return based on present Social Security taxes, you end up with $175,000 in the bank.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, last night in the President's State of the Union address, he talked about something that is important to all Americans, and what he said was let's save Social Security. What I think that means for all of us is that we get involved in that debate, because what he outlined was the beginning of a conversation wherein groups like Concord Coalition or AARP would be involved in town meetings throughout this next year, and then in December there would be a Social Security summit at the White House, and maybe the possibility of legislative change after that. Well, there have been a number of us here in the House that have been talking about Social Security for some time, and what needs to take place right now is that all Americans, as they think about Social Security, I would beg of them to be involved in this debate, because there is nothing more important to a whole lot of Americans than will or will not their Social Security check be there and waiting for them. I think that as we begin to think about it, we all know the problem. The problem has been very well described. The Social Security trustees said that if we do nothing to save Social Security, it goes bankrupt in 30 years and it begins to run structural deficits in about 15 years. What the trustees' report also showed was that if we do nothing to save Social Security, that the average rate of return for somebody working and paying into Social Security is but 1.9 percent. Mr. Speaker, 1.9 percent. That is not the American dream. The American dream is built upon putting a little bit of money away that actually grows towards something. But in this case, it is the case of putting money into a system; again, we are not talking about my grandmother's Social Security or my mother's Social Security, but we are talking about each of my three boys' Social Security. And that idea of earning 1.9 percent overall is bad, but what the trustees' report also shows is that anybody born after 1948 will get a negative rate of return on their Social Security investment. So as we think about this debate that is soon coming to this Congress and is soon coming to the White House, we ought to think about a couple of things. We ought to think about how do we fix it, because that is the big question. Do we simply cut benefits? I live along the coast of South Carolina and the retirees that I talk to there think that is a horrible idea. That is not the way to fix Social Security. We have many young people. Other people say, all right, if we cannot cut benefits, maybe we can raise payroll taxes. I think that is a crazy idea, because the young people that I talk to on a daily basis at home in South Carolina say that the idea of raising payroll taxes would squeeze them that much more. We can only squeeze but so much blood from a turnip and those young families that I talk to say they are squeezed. The idea of raising taxes would hurt them. That only leaves one other option out there for saving Social Security and that is letting one earn more on their Social Security investment, more than this 1.9 percent or more than this negative number. That is, I think, the significance of at least thinking about the idea of personal savings accounts. Because when personal savings accounts have been tried around the globe, people overwhelmingly have elected that option. In South American countries, 95 percent of the workers in Chile chose the idea of personal savings accounts. In Great Britain, whose demographics are remarkably similar to our own, 75 percent of the workers chose the option of personal savings accounts, or in our own country, a number of counties down in south Texas ran into the same problem we are running into in terms of demographics. They said, how are we going to fix Social Security, and prior to 1983 at the county government level, the State government level, one could create one's own Social Security system. Those counties in south Texas did and 80 percent of the workers, when given the option of personal savings accounts, chose that option. So I think that as we think about this debate that is coming our way, we really need to look at how do we save Social Security, and I think at least part of the formula for saving Social Security will be the option of personal savings accounts. Not mandatory, but again, leaving people above the age of 65 alone. We do not yank the rug out from underneath seniors, but offer the young people the choice, if it makes more sense for them and for their families, this option of personal savings accounts.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I have before you a bill that I introduced today. It is a bill that would put the worst insomniac in the world to sleep. I look here at 160 or 170 pages that by themselves are long and boring pages. And yet what this bill is about is, in essence, I think something that is very exciting. That is, I think that this bill, which is a bill to save Social Security, is a bill about the American dream. Because if you were to stop and think about it, I think that what we would all agree upon is that a part of the American dream is tied to ending a lifetime of work with something more than just memories. And yet for many Americans, in fact, we pulled the number at home in my State of South Carolina. Last year, about 38,000 people died and only about 243 filled out Federal estate tax returns, which says to me that something is wrong, because clearly for that small a number, 38,000 people died but 243 filled out Federal estate tax returns, which means in the eyes of the Federal Government they had accumulated enough in the way of assets to hold an estate that ought to be taxed. It says that something is wrong in fulfilling that part of the American dream that ties straight to ending a lifetime of work with more than something other than just memories. What is interesting about that is that a lot of people are beginning to recognize it. It has been constantly something that comes up in my congressional district back in South Carolina. Folks say to me, both young and old, the young folks say, I do not think I am going to get my Social Security when I grow up or when I finish working or when I retire. Older folks are saying, what I am hearing from my grandson or my granddaughter is that they do not think they are going to get their Social Security. And not only is it being heard in essence from the right, I guess is where I come from, but from the left. I mean somebody like Sam Beard, a person who I have been working very hard on this idea of saving Social Security. Sam Beard comes from the opposite political philosophy of my own. He was a staffer for Robert Kennedy. He spent his entire lifetime working, trying to do something about the inner cities. He thinks that one of the only ways that you save the inner city is with this idea of personal savings accounts, which is what is talked about in this bill. Because right now, though April 15 is a big day, April 15 is really an insignificant day when you think about overall tax rates in this country, because for 70 percent of Americans, the largest tax that they will pay is not income tax but payroll tax. And with Social Security 12 percent or, to be exact, 12.4 percent comes right off the top, not on April 15 but on every single working day. What the trustees have said is with that 12 percent that is going toward one's retirement plan, what they have said is that if we do nothing to save Social Security, it goes bankrupt in about 30 years and it begins running structural deficits in about 15, such that either you have to look at cutting benefits by about 14 percent or raising payroll taxes by about 16 percent. Both young people and old people that I talked to at home in South Carolina say neither of those are great options. What the trustees have also said is that the overall rate of return for everybody working and paying into Social Security today is 1.9 percent. And that everybody born after 1948 will get a negative rate of return on their Social Security investment. Again, these are not numbers that tie to people being able to live out the American dream in their retirement years. So either you can wait and do nothing, which might be the conventional political wisdom in Washington, or you can look at cutting benefits, which I do not think is acceptable, or you can look at raising payroll taxes, which I do not think is acceptable, or you can try one other thing. It has been tried around the world. That is, letting people earn more than this 1.9 percent or more than this negative number on their Social Security investment. That is what this bill does. What it does is simply offers people a choice. Everybody above the age of 65 would simply stay on Social Security as we know it. But people below that age would simply have a choice. That is, if they thought Social Security made more sense for themselves and their families then they could continue to stay on Social Security as we know it. But if they thought it did not, they could, instead of having their payroll tax go to Washington, it could be redirected into their own personal savings account that they owned and controlled and got a monthly statement on. That is not such a crazy idea because it has been a well-tested idea. It has been an idea that Great Britain has moved toward. It has been an idea that seven countries down in South America have moved toward. It has been an idea with 3.5 million workers in our own country that has been in essence tested. This is the beginning of a conversation about the American dream.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise here acknowledging the fact that people work very hard in Congress, but what I think we have to remind ourselves is the fact that we are not veterans, some of us are, we are not farmers, we are not teachers, all of whom deserve a COLA, but what we are is the elected representative Government of the United States of America, and as such I think we have to in essence be held to a higher standard because what the American public expects of us is that we lead by example. When Washington crossed the Delaware 200 years ago he did not say to the folks, ``You guys get in the boat, and I'll meet you on the other side.'' He got in the boat with them. And if my colleagues look at our budget, 73 percent of the cuts, the savings, whatever they want to call them, still come in the last 2 years of the budget, so there is much savings still expected from our American public, and as such I think we need to lead by example. The second reason I rise in support of this amendment is for the simple reason of sunshine. The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] already suggested this but just in terms of process I think it is very important, whether we think it is a good thing or think it is a bad thing, that we take an up-or-down vote.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, last month the people of India celebrated their 50th anniversary of independence and democracy. It takes perhaps a special effort for many Americans to imagine when our democracy was only 50 years old and the great hurdles we had to overcome to try to perfect our legal, political, economic, and social systems. India today is the world's largest democracy, 950 million people. India is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society, actively seeking to build a common national identity and overcome religious and ethnic conflict. In that half century, India has struggled to overcome the legacy of feudalism, followed by colonialism, and all of the problems of underdevelopment and unequal development, including problems of population growth, capital formation, technology development, and infrastructure development. They have shaped all of the basic institutions of a democratic system, including perhaps most significantly many independent, nongovernmental institutions and organizations dedicated to involving and empowering people. I rise here today in support of aid to India. Throughout my public career I have worked with the Asian-Indian community. My strong relationship with the Asian-Indian community in Chicago has afforded me opportunities on numerous occasions to meet with Indian officials who have visited Chicago, and this interaction has helped me to understand how important democracy, economic development, and human rights are to India. While the cold war no longer exists, our relations with south Asia must not be tainted by the cold war legacy. There is a constant state of tension with some of its neighbors who have large and powerful militaries. Several states in India, including Punjab and Kashmir, have in essence been involved in a low-intensity war, involving terrorism with foreign support, as evidenced by the recent bombing of a train in Punjab resulting in 36 deaths. Despite these difficulties, India has proven that she will not tolerate violations of democracy, and has acted to punish those guilty of violations of law and to reduce any such violations in the future. The United States has become India's largest trading partner, now approaching $9.5 billion per year, and her largest investor. India has adjusted her tax policies to further encourage trade and has become a significant player in many fields, including computer science. Yet India is still a country in need of assistance and development, especially in the most underdeveloped regions, needing assistance with health and educational programs. These programs involve financial and technical support from the United States, which is matched by volunteer equity on the part of the people of India. These programs have proven themselves to be successful in addressing the problems of underdevelopment, and also as powerful instruments of international understanding, communication and trust. It makes sense to continue our commitment to India. India has proven a success in its economic development and is a role model for other developing countries. We can take this opportunity now to improve our foreign policy relations with India. We can illustrate how the United States is a reliable friend and model. A vote against India in this House is not in the best interests of the United States and its reputation as a world leader. Therefore, I urge that we oppose any and all amendments that would single out India for a limitation on development assistance.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, because leaving aside the good and the bad of what we have heard about the peanut program, I think what we need to consider is the fact that if Members look at the peanut program as it is now configured, Members would look straight back to the Dark Ages. In the Dark Ages there was a feudal system wherein if you were lucky and drew the long end of the straw you were lord of the manor, and if you were unlucky you were a serf out there toiling on the land. In 1997, with our peanut program the way it is configured, if you draw the long end of the stick you have a quota from the Government and can sell your peanuts for about $600 a ton, and if you draw the short end of the stick you can sell them for about half that, the same peanuts. To make matters worse, about two-thirds of the quota owners, and again we are not talking about farmers here, are people that live in Los Angeles and New York and Miami. So I would simply make the observation that we need to move from the Dark Ages and into the light ages of a market-based system. I urge the adoption of this amendment.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment because there has been much talk about commitment. Yet what I think we need to ultimately be committed to is to the simple theme of common sense. What we have with our sugar subsidy program is a system that does not make common sense. I say that because here we have a program that costs American consumers an additional $1.4 billion a year in the form of higher sugar price. All that benefit is handed to in essence the hands of a very few, for instance the Fanjul family that live down in Palm Beach and get $65 million a year of personal benefit. They have got yachts and helicopters and planes. They are on the Forbes 400 list. So what I have got are people that live in my home district, living in trailers subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. To me that does not make common sense. I urge adoption of this amendment.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, my plane was unavoidably detained and I missed rollcall votes Nos. 246 and 247 on Tuesday afternoon. Had I been here for the vote, I would have supported both bills.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I have been hearing a fair bit about taxes. I think that is going to be the subject of debate over this next week and the week after. When we talk about taxes, I think we are talking about something much more important than taxes alone. What we are really talking about is the American dream. It strikes me that there are two ways to get at the American dream. One is to let somebody keep more of what they are earning. The other way is to let somebody earn more on what they are earning. What do I mean by that? What I mean is, I heard a story here just last week about a woman by the name of Osceola McCarthy. My colleagues may have already heard this story, but Osceola McCarthy was a washerwoman down in the southern part of Mississippi. And she was in her late 70's. She goes to the nearby school. She had spent her life as a washerwoman, her entire lifetime washing people's clothes, never earned much money over the course of her lifetime. She goes to this nearby university and she said, I would like to help out. And they figure, well, she is going to give us a cloth doily or something. But instead of a cloth doily, she hands them $150,000. Everybody at the university cannot believe it. How in the world did this washerwoman come up with $150,000 for the university? What she said is, I just put a little bit away over a long period of time. In fact Einstein was once asked, what is the most powerful force in the universe. His reply was, compound interest. It is amazing what you can end up with at the end of a working lifetime if you simply put a little bit away over a long enough period of time and let it grow and compound. And that simple idea is a very powerful idea that gets at the second part of the American dream, again one part of the American dream being we can get there by letting people keep more of what they are earning, which is what tax cuts are about. But the second part is letting people earn more on what they are earning, because what the Social Security trustees have said is that Social Security today, while it has done a fabulous job for my mother and my grandmother, what they have said is that it will not do such a great job for my three young boys. Marshall is 4; Landon is 3; Bolton is 1. And what they have said is that for a worker today, the average rate of return is 1.9 percent. And what they have said for my three little boys is that the rate of return is negative. And the fundamentals behind what is driving that are not going to change. One is that we are living longer as a country. Each of us, average life expectancy when Social Security was created was 62 years of age. Today it is 76. Every year that I grow older, I hope that the medical folks keep making advances so that life expectancy continues to move out. That is a phenomenon we are not going to change. The other phenomenon we are not going to change in terms of Social Security is that people are having fewer kids. We have gone from having big families on the farm to having relatively small families today. We have got three boys. The idea of mentioning to my wife, Jenny, why do we not have another 6 or 7, I think we could help solve the Social Security problem, is not going to fly at home. What we have been wondering is, is there a third way out. I think there is. This idea of personal savings accounts, which are built on the simple idea that Osceola McCarthy's wealth was built on. Because what we ultimately want to see in America is everybody building wealth, not just a few people at the top. And this simple idea of personal savings accounts. Personal savings accounts has been tried in a host of countries around the globe. It has been tried in a number of States and counties within our own country, in fact. Down in south Texas, Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria Counties down in south Texas, prior to 1983, you could create your own Social Security system. You could stay on the Federal version or you could create your own version at the State or local level. Those counties did. What they found was those county workers got more in the way of disability insurance. They got more in the way of survivor benefits, and they got more in the way of retirement income. In other words, there was a third way out. And not only was there a third way out in terms of having more in the way of retirement income, there were a whole host of other benefits. For instance, choosing for you when you want to retire. If you stop and think about it, you can go down the grocery store aisle and look at 25 different kinds of detergent. You could look at 35 different kinds of toothpaste. But you cannot pick for you when you want to retire. Yet you think about it, why should a Congressman or a Senator or a bureaucrat in Washington decide for you when you want to retire. Why do not you get to pick for you when you want to retire? One of the benefits that would come with the idea of personal savings accounts is somebody making that decision for themselves. There are a host of other benefits that would come with the idea of personal savings accounts. It is not something we want to impose on seniors, but I think it is something we want to begin talking about for people that are juniors.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANFORD. This amendment would leave it up to you all basically to decide on how those resources might shift. All it does is freeze and prevent in essence a 3-percent increase.

Mr. SANFORD. My only question for the gentleman would be, does he think that there might be 3 percent or just shy of 3 percent of waste within the State Department?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would be so kind as to continue to yield, the gentleman is precisely right, and that is why this amendment does not attempt to micromanage where any of this money should come from. All it does is freeze at 1997 levels.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that my understanding is that the Congress is in charge of the pursestrings of this Nation and that, therefore, this is the kind of micromanaging the taxpayers would expect of us.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?