Congress Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2009--Continued
Floor Speech
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009--Continued -- (Senate - March 12, 2008)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BUNNING. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To repeal the tax increase on Social Security benefits imposed by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993)
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Mr. BUNNING. Mr. President, I spoke about this yesterday, and I have brought it to this Chamber before on numerous occasions. In fact, the Senate adopted a very similar amendment by unanimous consent last year, and it passed on a recorded vote 2 years earlier.
My amendment would repeal an unfair tax that Congress enacted in 1993. The Congressional Budget Office has said that over 15 million senior citizens are affected by the taxation of Social Security benefits. When Congress created the Social Security Program to provide income security for seniors, part of the structure of that program, and one of the reasons for its popularity, was that benefits were not taxed. I will say that again.
Social Security benefits were not taxed when the program was created. In 1983, the Greenspan Commission and Congress decided that half of the benefits of some seniors should be subject to taxation and, in 1993, raised that amount to 85 percent of the Social Security benefits that a senior citizen receives.
This tax affected supposedly ``wealthy'' seniors, with incomes above $34,000 for single seniors, and $44,000 for a couple. Those are supposedly wealthy senior citizens. The goal of this seemed to be to impose a type of means testing on Social Security beneficiaries--in other words, tilting the benefit structure in favor of low-income seniors, making it more like a welfare program.
This is the kind of change Senator Patrick Moynihan often warned Congress about. But the Ways and Means Committee and the President ignored his warnings. If that was the goal, the legislation was fundamentally flawed. The $34,000 and $44,000 amounts were not indexed for inflation. I can assure you that seniors earning these amounts do not consider themselves wealthy at all--particularly with the increased cost of prescription drugs, rent, or mortgage payments, gasoline, particularly with unleaded regular being $3.20 a gallon now, heating oil, and even food prices that seniors are experiencing today.
My amendment is fairly simple. It drops the tax back to the pre-1993 level, starting in 2008, this year, in this budget. This means the 85 percent tax would be eliminated, and the maximum amount of Social Security benefits that could be taxed would be 50 percent. The revenue from the 1993 tax was applied to the Medicare trust fund.
My amendment would make the trust fund whole by offsetting the cost of the tax rollback by $89 billion over 5 years, with an adjustment to function 920 of the budget.
The inspector general's and the CBO's budget operation report identified over $300 billion in potential savings on Government programs over the next 5 years. I believe the committee of jurisdiction can review wasteful Government spending in order to offset this extremely important tax cut for America's seniors. This was an unfair tax on our seniors when it was enacted, and it is time we repeal it.
Think of this now. A senior citizen, single, with an income of $34,000 receiving maybe $36,000 from Social Security and other income, and they have to pay 85 percent tax on that Social Security benefit--85 percent. That is the largest, highest taxation of any benefit we receive from the Federal Government--85 percent of anything. Say I receive $36,000 from the Federal Government in Social Security benefits and other income. On the $34,000 I receive from Social Security, 85 percent of that is taxed at the normal rate that I would pay in whatever tax bracket I fall under. The same goes with a married couple. Married couples, both seniors, both have unusual expenses as far as prescription drugs, and some have prescription drugs amounting to maybe $1,000 each per month--maybe $1,000 each per month, home heating oil, gas and electric to heat their homes or cool their homes, groceries--all these things add up for our seniors today. This tax is completely and totally unfair to the senior citizens we have today.
I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, as many have in the past. This is something that should have been done a long time ago. I have tried, since its inception in 1993, to get this repealed back to the 50-percent level. I have not been successful. The majority, last year, accepted this amendment by unanimous consent. It went to the conference committee and was kicked out. They accepted it, said they would try to do it, and then because of the cost it was kicked out.
What does that tell our senior citizens in the United States--that they are second-class citizens; they have to pay more on their Social Security benefits than anybody else. I don't think that is fair. I think it is time that we did something about it.
So, please, I ask my colleagues on the Senate floor, help us this year finally repeal this unfair tax that we added to our seniors in 1993.
Mr. President, I will ask for the yeas and nays when the amendment comes up.
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