Senate Debates Lockbox

.......... June 16, for the third time the Senate debated H.R. 1259, the "lock box" bill to safeguard Social Security's excess profits and whether to put this bill to a vote. .......... Senator Spencer Abraham (R-Michigan), a member of the Senate Budget Committee said: " We are here now after having, on three occasions, failed to obtain cloture on a Senate bill to try to lock away the Social Security trust fund moneys and prevent them from being spent on other Federal Government expenditures. The Democrats have filibustered the lockbox for 58 days. This is significant, because an additional $304 million of new Social Security surplus funds are added to the trust fund virtually every day. " .......... Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-Illinois) said: "A few years back Congress passed laws making it illegal for State and local governments to plunder the pension funds of their employees. But during all this time, where Congress has put these laws on the books and made it illegal in the private sector and at the State and local government level to plunder pension funds, we have gone on and on in Washington taking all the money that goes into the Social Security trust fund, taking every dime of it out, and spending it on some other program. .......... As a result, as I speak now on the Senate floor, there is no money in the Social Security trust fund. All of it has been taken out and spent on other programs. We have put meaningless, nonmarketable, nonnegotiable securities in the Social Security trust fund, securities that have no economic value because they cannot be sold to raise cash. .......... Right now our Government is building up, theoretically, surpluses in the Social Security trust fund, but they are taking all that money out and spending it. So when we actually need it to pay benefits, beginning in the year 2014, there will be no money there. No matter what the balance of those bogus IOUs is in the Social Security trust fund, in the year 2014--whether that balance is $1 trillion or $5 trillion--they are of no assistance in paying benefits to those who depend on Social Security. The country will either have to raise taxes or cut benefits to make up for the shortfall that is anticipated after the year 2014. .......... This legislation is basic, decent common sense. We should not allow Congress to continue frittering away the Social Security trust fund. I urge all my colleagues to support it and end this outrageous practice of plundering the Social Security trust fund, to the detriment of our Nation's seniors and those who will be desiring to live on Social Security benefits in the next century." .......... There were no rebuttals to statements such as these. The Senate then failed to get the three-fifths required to put the bill up for vote. The vote on cloture was republican yeas-55, democratic nays-44.

..........

..........