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Providing Security at Home and Abroad
February 4, 2005
Contact: Christine Shott (202) 224-0610
Providing Security at Home and Abroad
by Senator Rick Santorum
In what was an extremely poignant night, President George W. Bush laid out his agenda for the next year in his State of the Union address. The President was clear in his delivery that what we accomplish or choose to ignore today will affect the lives of our children and grandchildren. Will we unfairly place the burden of Social Security reform on our children and grandchildren? Will we leave the job of eradicating terrorism and securing our homeland to the next generation? With President Bush’s leadership, we can continue to secure financial stability for future generations of retirees, secure Iraq and the Middle East, and secure our world for future generations.
A true test of leadership is to confront problems before they become crises. As President Bush made clear in his speech, we must confront the problems facing Social Security today in order to avoid difficult, limited, and expensive options to the Social Security system in the future. America must honor its promise to those who have worked hard to ensure retirement security and the opportunity to own and plan for their future. Unless Social Security is saved, the system will not remain solvent for future generations of American workers and retirees.
No one denies that we have a Social Security problem. The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 90 percent of Americans think that the Social Security system is either in crisis or “in trouble.”
Prior their recent partisan displays, Democratic leaders agreed that Social Security needed to be fixed. In December 1999, Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said, “Fixing Social Security is an urgent priority. It ought to be at the top of both parties agendas.” President Clinton expressed similar sentiments in April of 1999, “Now is the time to strengthen Social Security for the future…we can and must accomplish this critical goal for the American people.”
The only way to avoid the imminent financial problems, without making Social Security an even worse deal for younger and lower-income workers, is to establish a system of personal retirement accounts. These accounts would give all workers the flexibility to improve their retirement income above what Social Security will be able to pay under today’s system, and leave a nest egg to future generations. Congress must work in a bipartisan fashion to permanently save and secure Social Security for our children and grandchildren.
As Congress works to ensure retirement security for working Americans, we have made great strides in advancing our security at home and in the Middle East. As the President laid out in his speech, in the year ahead we must continue to focus our efforts on training Iraqi military and security forces to ensure that freedom reigns in the Middle East. I applaud our Armed Forces whose sacrifice in Iraq has allowed the Iraqi people to begin to defend their own country and control their own destiny.
This past week, the Iraqi people exercised their right to vote and in doing so took a step to secure their own future. The amazing images of Iraqis casting their votes for the first time in thirty years, and dipping their fingers in purple ink to prove they had done so, suggest that we are closer than we’ve ever been.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal quoted one Iraqi as saying, “I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world’s tyrants.” The elections, planned and executed for Iraqis and by Iraqis are the beginning of Iraq’s course towards freedom, and an historic achievement that may not be fully appreciated for some time.
In the State of the Union, President Bush asked every American citizen: What will be the state of our children’s union? The President’s answer was unmistakable—we will work hard today to ensure security for our children’s future. But the real test lies in the political and moral courage of Congress to either spend the year in partisan bickering or advancing liberty at home and abroad. As your Senator, I was elected to solve problems, not allow them to get worse or leave them for our children.
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