Category: Elise Castelli
Sununu Proposes Legislation to Create Personal Social Security Accounts
WASHINGTON, April 20 – Sen. John Sununu has become one of the first senators to propose a concrete plan for changing Social Security, re-filing a proposal on Wednesday that would allow workers under 55 years old to eventually invest more than half of their Social Security payroll taxes through personal savings accounts.
“This is a better retirement security system,” the New Hampshire Republican said during a Capitol Hill press conference. “They (retirees) own it, it’s there for them when they retire and they can leave it to their children and grandchildren.”
Co-author Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) said he also would re-file the bill in the House on Wednesday. Last year, Sununu’s version of similar legislation failed to get out of the Senate Finance Committee.
Under the measure filed Wednesday, persons 55and older would be covered by the current Social Security program, while those younger than 55 would have the option of diverting a portion of the annual 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax into their personal accounts.
Between 2006 and 2015, workers would be allowed to invest an average of 3.4 percentage points of the tax, or more than one-quarter of the total tax, through their personal accounts. Starting in 2016, an average of 6.4 percentage points of the tax could be placed into the accounts. These accounts would be backed with a federal guarantee that investors would be able to collect, at a minimum, a sum equal to the Social Security benefit they would be entitled to under the current law, Ryan said at the Wednesday press conference.
The lower percentage of the payroll tax during the first 10 years would allow the plan to be phased in at a lower cost, Ryan said. The transition costs of meeting the benefit payoffs to retired workers while reducing the revenue from the payroll tax would be paid for three ways, Ryan said. The first is to “stop the raid” on current Social Security payroll tax surpluses, which are used to fund other federal programs, he said. Second, the bill places savings resulting from a one percent reduction in the rate of federal spending growth for the next eight years into Social Security. Third, corporate tax revenue generated by the new personal account investments would go to guarantee payment of the benefits under the current law.
“If none of that happens over the next 10 years, we would have to borrow $1.1 trillion to finance this bill,” Ryan said. “I would argue that borrowing.$1.1 trillion to pay off a $12 trillion debt is still a very good deal.”
Ryan was referring to the Social Security Administration’s estimate that the system’s “unfunded liability” in perpetuity would amount to at least $11 trillion. Critics have called that estimate meaningless.
President George W. Bush has been touring the nation promoting his agenda to restructure Social Security, including establishment of personal accounts. The White House has said it will be up to Congress to work out the details of any change to Social Security.
On Monday, during a stop in South Carolina on his 60 Stops in 60 Days tour, Bush said that personal accounts would not be enough to save Social Security. He said an increase in retirement age and a change in the formula that determines annual inflation adjustments in benefits under the current system are among the adjustments that should be considered. One idea is to base that formula on annual changes in the cost of living rather than wage increases, Bush said.
Bush’s critics have said that applying the Social Security payroll tax to more than the current cap of $90,000 a year would go a long way to solving the system’s financial needs without resort to wholesale changes.
Bush’s personal accounts plan “diverts money way from the system that provides benefits to working people,” Mark MacKenzie, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the AFL-CIO, said of Sununu’s plan. “Even if you look at the future of Social Security, Social Security has been adjusted in the past and the payroll tax has not been raised on Social Security in years and the cap has not been raised on Social Security. They should take the cap up and they’ll have some more money going into the system.”
MacKenzie said in an interview that corporate cuts in benefits and pensions have left people with little money to put away, resulting in a reliance on social security. Furthermore, the lack of stability in the stock market makes workers reluctant to invest, he said. “They understand it’s a crap shoot. They look at a market capable of dropping 100 points in a day.”
Sununu said the legislation he filed would not have to resort to changes in benefits or in payroll taxes. “I think our legislation proves that personal retirement accounts, in and of themselves, can bring us a permanently solvent system,” he said.
According to a report the chief actuary of Social Security filed last year, the Ryan-Sununu plan would eliminate the $11 trillion unfunded liability in Social Security if it follows its current course. The actuary also found the Ryan-Sununu plan would achieve growing surpluses by 2038, 11 years before the current system is said to go bankrupt, and would produce solvency by 2051, Ryan said.
Sununu said this measure is “the least we could do in order to avoid sticking our children and our grandchildren with a $12 trillion bill.”
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Decades Later, America Still Trying to Leave No Man Behind
WASHINGTON, April 21 -As the nation prepares to mark the 30th anniversary of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the government is still actively searching for the 1,835 prisoners of war and missing military personnel who-dead or alive- remain somewhere in Southeast Asia.
The nerve center of the search is the Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, based in Arlington, Va., which uses its 600-member staff spread throughout the world to sift through pages of documents, years of memories, grains of soil and strands of DNA in an attempt to uncover clues that would bring the missing persons home.
While all of the cases of missing service men are active, the more details that are known about the case, including when, where and how the person went missing and if the missing were last seen alive or dead, the greater likelihood the U.S. government will be able to convince a former enemy that it should dig up the country looking for lost soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Missing Personnel Office.
"We would not allow the Vietnamese to come into the United States and start digging up what they thought were grave sites in the middle of the Pentagon," Greer said in an interview. "Likewise they don't allow us to, but what they do is they try to provide us information gathered by their sources so we can be satisfied, if we trust the information, that we know enough about the case in there, and then we can decide to pursue it."
For example, in the case of Col. Sheldon Burnett, who was recently buried in Arlington National Cemetery 34 years after his death in Laos, the government knew the approximate location of his disappearance, had eyewitness testimony from comrades and former enemies and received the cooperation of the Laotian and Vietnamese governments. This information allowed them to pursue the case and find Burnett's remains.
Burnett was the fourth missing New Hampshire soldier to be found in Indochina. Six Granite staters are still missing, according to the Pentagon office's Web site.
Excavations, such as the one in the Laotian jungle that led to the recovery of Burnett's remains, can start only after an investigation has been narrowed to a specific area and enough evidence exists to suggest "there is a good chance we're going to find the remains," Greer said. "We can't send a very expensive team of 100 people, 100 specialists, into an area and say, 'OK, everybody go out and just start poking.' "
The search includes not only Vietnam servicemen, but also the 128 Cold War missing, the 8,152 Korean War missing, and the more than 78,000 missing from World War II. Many of those missing from World War II were lost at sea, either in sunken ships, downed aircrafts or island-hopping campaigns. Nearly 300 World War II missing have been identified since 1976.
For some groups the office's carefully considered approach, mixing economic prudence with sensitive diplomacy and a slow investigative process, is not good enough. They say the government should be spending and doing more to bring those lost service people home.
"Over 90 percent of the total areas where people are lost are areas controlled by Vietnam," said Ann Mills Griffiths, the executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families, which represents only families of those missing from the Vietnam War. "We're still not seeing a response from the Vietnamese, nor are we seeing pressure on them by the man in charge of POW/MIAs at the Department of Defense."
Recently, Griffiths' group expressed lack of confidence in deputy assistant secretary of Defense Jerry Jennings, who heads the POW/MIA office, complaining that he seemed unable to work with families of the missing and seemed to be easing the pressure on host nations, such as Vietnam, to turn over information that could lead to the whereabouts of missing U.S. servicemen, she said.
In the group's March newsletter, Griffiths writes about Jennings' "distinct lack of warmth in his demeanor toward the individual families."
Furthermore, she writes, "Mr. Jennings' tenure has been more destructive than helpful, especially in terms of alienating other departments, agencies and senior U.S. and foreign officials, including regional U.S. ambassadors."
The group's 2004 policy assessment concluded that "current leadership positions in the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) have espoused the view that normalization somehow negates the need for steady, determined persistence to gain Vietnam's full cooperation, relying instead on Vietnamese rhetoric and a changed atmosphere in U.S.-Vietnam relations."
Since the end of the Vietnam War, 748 of the 2,583 initially missing have been accounted for, according to the office's Web site.
Jennings could not be reached for comment because he is on indefinite medical leave, but Greer, the department's spokesman, responded for the department.
"I've been here 10 years and worked for three senior leaders" including Jennings, Greer said. Jennings "has traveled more, and met with more senior officials of more foreign governments, than any of our previous leaders," he added. "He has led initiatives into areas where doors were previously closed to us and to our recovery operations."
In the 10 years the United States has been working in North Korea, the office has recovered remains of more than 200 soldiers. Additionally the office has achieved access to documents in Russian, Vietnamese and Laotian archives, which had not been available before, Greer said.
Keeping government leaders opening doors is also the goal of veterans' groups, such as the Vietnam Veterans of America, whose announced mission is to make sure the government does not forget its missing. The group has advocated increasing the funds for the Missing Personnel Office so that more teams can be sent into the field to search for fallen comrades in all wars.
"We want the fullest possible accounting of POWs and MIAs; this is the highest goal of our organization," said Bernard Edelman, the veterans' organization's associate director of government relations. The group also sends members to Indochina to exchange information with Vietnamese soldiers about the location of missing servicemen on both sides in the hope that the information gathered could be of use to teams searching for remains.
"Basically, what we are trying to do is to bring closure to the families," Edelman said. "We have to work with the Vietnamese, the Laotians and the Cambodians if we're going to get people in there to explore different sites."
Efforts to bring a full accounting of war missing costs the government $105 million a year, Greer said. This covers not only the cost of excavations but also the expense of identifying remains sent to labs in Hawaii and Virginia through DNA and other means and of tracing artifacts, such as buttons, fabric, and boots, back to the war, branch, and unit of the deceased serviceman.
"People say we shouldn't be spending anything," Greer said, "but American veterans, American families, American service personnel in uniform say, 'You are doing exactly what we want you to do, this is a national commitment that we are going to hold you accountable for.'. They want to be sure the government does not leave anyone behind, even if it takes 60 years for us to get the answers; they say, 'Get them out, bring them home.'"
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After 34 Years Missing, A Hero is Finally Laid to Rest
ARLINGTON, VA., April 13 - A long blue line of soldiers wound is way through the sun-filled green fields of Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, passing stones that mark the resting places of those who fought and died in the nation's wars since the 1860s. Behind the procession of the 3 rd Infantry Division honor guard, a caisson drawn by six white horses carried the flag-draped coffin of U.S. Army Col. Sheldon Burnett, who was finally brought home to rest 34 years after his death in Laos.
"He's finally home and not lying in a shallow grave all alone," said Burnett's daughter. Trish, who was just 6 years old when the helicopter her father was riding in was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. "I wish we could bring every single one of them home."
On March 7, 1971, Burnett and three other soldiers were flying along the border of Vietnam and Laos on a mission to provide support to American troops fighting the North Vietnamese there. Their helicopter was hit and crashed near the landing zone. Burnett, a New Hampshire resident, and Warrant Officer Randolph Ard, the pilot, were pinned alive under the wreckage.
The two other passengers, who survived and escaped, reported that Burnett and Ard were alive but severely injured when they were last seen. When South Vietnamese troops arrived 11 days later, Burnett and Ard were gone and presumed missing, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
Wednesday's burial was an honor Burnett's children had fought to bestow on their father. It was a fight started by their mother, Margaret, who wrangled for years with the government, filing freedom of information requests atop freedom of information requests to uncover some tidbit of information that might reveal where Burnett lay and what happened all those years ago.
When Margaret Burnett died in 1998, the torch was passed to her children, who continued to track government efforts until last fall,, when investigations by the Laotian, Vietnamese and American governments discovered Burnett's and Ard's shallow graves in the Laotian jungle.
Wednesday, daughter Leigh, 48, said her mother "would have been awfully proud" at the sight of the ceremony, which she said showed "the kind of respect she thought he deserved."
It was a funeral of full military honors. A riderless brown horse, with a pair of boots backward in the saddle's stirrups, followed the caisson, an honor reserved only for those of the rank of colonel or above.
At the gravesite, Trish, Leigh, their brother Mike and their families wept as three volleys of gunfire rang out from the seven-member firing party of "Old Guard" soldiers and Taps was played by a lone bugler.
With mechanical precision, the eight military pallbearers folded the flag into a triangle and handed it to the chaplain, who, kneeling before the family, presented the flag to the siblings "on behalf of a grateful nation."
"It was a nice ceremony," Mike, 49, said afterwards. "I thought he deserved that. It was nice to see that they went all out."
Mike said he was also touched to see that 20 members of Rolling Thunder, an organization of Vietnam veterans that works to bring home prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action, came to pay their respects.
The veterans, who followed the procession on their motorcycles behind the cars of family and friends, presented the family with a plaque marking the recovery of Burnett's body and his burial. Then one by one, they stepped beside Burnett's coffin and laid on it strings of purple, green, white and yellow beads symbolizing the Purple Heart and the Vietnam campaign ribbon. The group comforted the tearful Burnett family with hugs and handshakes.
"It's just an honor bringing these people home, and it's our honor to be here," said Ted Daniels, the sergeant at arms for the group's Virginia Chapter Three. "I hope it makes the family feel good to know they have someone behind them."
Wednesday's burial does not mark the end of the family's struggle to uncover the mysteries surrounding Burnett's disappearance. Trish and her siblings still have questions. Why was he in Laos and what does the Ard family know about what happened that day? These are questions that the stacks of censored documents failed to answer.
Ard was buried in Alabama last month, the Pentagon said.
Despite the missing answers, there is a sense of "resolution," Leigh said. "It's more clear now what happened, when it happened and where he's been for all these years."
"Relief," Trish added. "I can't believe he is home.. It's almost disbelief."
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N.H. House Members Opposes Arctic Drilling
WASHINGTON, March 17-New Hampshire's two House members oppose a Senate budget provision that would permit oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in search of crude oil believed to be located there, they said Thursday in separate interviews.
That puts Reps. Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley in conflict with their fellow New Hampshire Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Judd Gregg, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Sen. John Sununu voted Wednesday in favor of drilling, a position President Bush also supports .
"I am pleased that the budget on the House side, that we're about to approve, does not have the same provision that permits it," Bass said. "I am hopeful that when the bill comes from back from conference it will not include that language."
While the House has supported this provision in the past, ANWR drilling was not included in the House version of the 2006 budget resolution, which could cause problems in the reconciliation process.
In recent years, differences between the House and Senate budget resolutions prevented Congress from enacting a final budget. The two chambers disagree on several key spending issues, including Medicaid cuts, which were removed from the Senate bill on Thursday.
"I don't think it does enough to solve the issue of the supply," Bass said of ANWR drilling. "I don't think it's appropriate, on the basis of a possibility of there being oil and gas resources there, to desecrate this wilderness."
Bradley, who sits on the House Budget Committee, agreed, saying, "I have said all along that we ought to be producing more energy in this country.and we need to do it in a way that protects our environment.
"I think that ANWR would not see oil for about 10 years," he continued. "I think that it would be an area that if we can preserve it from drilling we should."
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Sununu Named Senate’s Top Free Trade Supporter
WASHINGTON, March 16-The Cato Institute named Sen. John Sununu the Senate's truest free trader at a Capitol Hill luncheon Wednesday promoting the importance of a free-trade policy for the United States.
According to a Cato report on the trade voting record of the 108 th Congress, Sununu's votes were the most consistent with the libertarian think tank's views on free trade, which include opposition to trade barriers, such as tariffs on foreign agriculture goods, and to trade subsidies, such as government financial support of domestic agriculture.
Of the 10 Senate votes on trade barriers and the one Senate vote on subsidies, Sununu voted the free-trade position every time, Cato said. The report considered as free traders those members who voted against trade barriers and subsidies alike at least two-thirds of the time.
"Trade allows us, our country, our workers, our employers, to make investments and put capital in those areas where we are most productive and most capable, where we have the potential to earn the greatest return on that capital," said Sununu, who was one of the featured speakers at the luncheon. "We oppose barriers because they are inefficient. They set up costly and arbitrary hurdles to us.getting access to the inputs, the materials, the services, the information that will allow them to operate as efficiently as possible."
Sununu warned the overflow crowd about the "slippery slope of protectionism," saying that Congress's penchant for protecting jobs through trade barriers and subsidies poses an economic danger that will leave American companies producing buggy whips in a world economy producing combustion engines.
"The danger is that you are protecting a less-competitive, less-valuable area of economic activity, and if you protect it long enough and the barriers finally do fall, you have a catastrophe on your hands," he said. "The importance of knocking down these barriers is to allow the dynamic economy to operate, and that does mean that there will be companies that succeed and companies that manufacture buggy whips that slowly decline."
Daniel Griswold, the author of the report and director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, praised Sununu and Rep. Jeffery Flake, an Arizona Republican who was the most consistent free-trade voter in the House last session, saying that they "respect the judgment of their constituents to spend their own money, their hard-earned dollars, in any way they choose in a global economy."
Free trade allows individuals to invest money without government interference, allows the economy to grow at a faster rate by spurring innovation and productivity through competition, and allows developing nations to improve their economies and decrease poverty while improving labor standards and respect for human rights, Griswold said.
The report found that the congressional approach to trade policy is inconsistent, approving free-trade agreements and reducing tariffs while maintaining export and production subsidies, which Cato says draws resources away from "their best use."
"We look like hypocrites when America's political leaders complain incessantly that U.S. producers must compete against unfair subsidies and trade barriers abroad and this study shows that very few members of Congress are voting consistently for policies that would create a freer global economy, free from subsidies and trade barriers," Griswold said. "Most members of Congress have no standing to criticize other governments who deviate from free trade."
According to the report, few members of Congress voted consistently for free trade: 25 in the House, including Rep. Charles Bass, and 24 in the Senate. Only five of the free traders were Democrats.
In addition to the free trade category, the Cato study identified members whose votes put them in three other trade positions. "Internationalists" are those who opposed barriers and supported subsidies at least two-thirds of the time, with 157 House members and 24 Senate members falling in this category, including Sen. Judd Gregg. Of the internationalists 99 are Republicans.
Those identified as "interventionists," supporting both barriers and subsidies two-thirds of the time, comprised 16 House members and 15 Senate members. This group included just seven Republicans.
The last group, called "isolationists," supported barriers and opposed subsidies two-thirds of the time; that was the smallest group, with just two House members, both Democrats.
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Bass, Bradley Support Bill to Expand Stem Cell Research
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 -Both House members from New Hampshire on Wednesday threw their weight behind a bill that would expand federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. Their Senate colleagues have opposed such legislation in the past.
"Every year thousands of Americans die from illnesses that embryonic stem cell research could potentially prevent, treat and cure," Rep. Charles Bass said in a written statement. "The legislation introduced today is crucial to our community because it would lift some of these restrictions and pave the way for medical breakthroughs for many debilitating, painful and deadly diseases."
Under the legislation introduced this week by Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Col.), the number of embryonic stem cells that receive federal funding would be expanded beyond those in existence before August 2001, when President Bush instituted a moratorium on funding for new cells.
If enacted, funding would go only to research on stem cells donated by in vitro fertilization clinics with the written consent of the patients stating that the cells were no longer needed and would have otherwise been discarded.
Rep. Jeb Bradley said Wednesday that he hopes the expansion of the pool will bring about cures to deadly or disabling diseases.
"When President Bush announced his policy on restricting federal funding for stem cell research in 2001, 78 stem cell lines existed," Bradley said in a statement. "Today, the National Institutes of Health lists only 22 lines available for research. This legislation will give federal researchers access to other available stem cell lines, enabling them to conduct research on a variety of incurable medical ailments, such as juvenile diabetes, paralysis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, as well as many others."
In backing the bill, Bradley and Bass, both of whom co-sponsored it when it was originally filed last year, have separated themselves from their Senate colleagues on this issue. In the past, both Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu have opposed opening up new lines of embryonic stem cells to federal research dollars.
" Companion legislation.has not been introduced in the Senate at this time. Should that happen, Sen. Gregg will look forward to reviewing any legislative proposals," Gregg's spokeswoman, Erin Rath, said in a written statement. "Sen. Gregg believes that embryonic stem cell research is an exciting new field of science that continues to develop and has the potential to lead to real benefits as we fight a variety of diseases. However, it is also an area that raises serious ethical issues since living embryos must be destroyed in order to pursue embryonic stem cell research."
A spokeswoman for Bass dismissed concerns about a difference of opinion between the House and Senate members.
"Typically in the New Hampshire delegation the congressmen and senators have worked together very well," said Margo Shideler, Bass's press secretary. "Definitely there have been times in the past where members have disagreed on issues, but this has not harmed the relationship, and we look forward to a close relationship in the future."
Shideler would not comment on whether Bass would urge the senators to support this bill. "He is more focused on what happens in the House right now."
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Presidential Budget Proposal Draws Praise and Criticism
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - New Hampshire's all-Republican congressional delegation applauds President Bush's tightfisted $2.75 trillion budget for next year as a way to maintain America's financial stability. Interest groups whose programs are targeted disagree.
The budget aims to cut the $427 billion deficit in half by 2009, thus quelling calls from abroad for the United States to improve its fiscal house. In the process, the president would eliminate 150 programs, including 48 education programs, scale back Medicaid by $60 billion over 10 years and curb local programs like law enforcement assistance. But the 2006 budget proposal does not account for war spending, which is expected to top $80 billion for this year, or the costs of revamping Social Security.
Sen. Judd Gregg said he thinks the president's budget is on the right track for America's financial future.
"I think if we get the fiscal house of government in order and start to move toward a balanced budget, that will help all activity in this country," said Gregg, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
"I think we can cut [the deficit] in half by 2008," a year earlier than Bush's forecast, Gregg said in an interview on Thursday. "We shouldn't back away from it as a goal. If we start giving up on that now before we've even written the budget or the appropriations bills we won't be doing our job."
Rep. Jeb Bradley also praised the president for setting a strict spending limit. "I think that the most important thing is that the president's budget prescribes fiscal restraint," he said in an interview. "We have to take a hard line on spending at the same time we win a war on terrorism and keep the country safe and secure."
In a written statement, Sen. John Sununu shared these sentiments.
"We need to make sure our country continues to allocate the resources necessary to national security to ensure our troops in the field have what they need to get the job done, and that means we're going to have to restrain the growth of government here at home," he said. "We need to review the thousands of government programs and find those.where we can use the money better elsewhere, where we can consolidate efforts where programs have outlived their usefulness, or determine where resources just aren't being used effectively."
With so many programs on the chopping block, however, some groups are expressing concern that not enough attention is being paid to needs at home.
Law enforcement officials were surprised by $1.5 billion in proposed cuts to local law enforcement assistance programs, which have helped police departments with money for equipment, have run victims' support programs and supported anti-crime initiatives.
"I always thought homeland security began at home," said Plaistow Police Chief Stephen Savage, the president of the New Hampshire Association of Police Chiefs. "Many of us are wondering, with emphasis on homeland security being so critical, why would you cut funding that affects all these grants and abilities to do those kinds of services."
With the programs Bush wants to trim or eliminate, New Hampshire police have "been able to do a significant amount with adding officers on the street, purchasing a significant amount of equipment and expanding our communication infrastructure in the state," Savage said. "It's had a positive impact on juvenile justice, and victims' funds have been expanded."
But Gregg said it was "premature to start getting into what specific programs are going to end up as winners and losers. Clearly it will be a different set than the president wants because Congress is going to have its opinion, but it will be in the context of a very stringent budget, so there will be winners and losers."
Last year the president proposed 65 program cuts, but Congress went along with fewer than six, according to The New York Times. Nevertheless, some groups are still worried about how they would be affected if the president's proposals for their programs are accepted.
The National Governors Association says it is worried that proposed cutbacks in Medicaid would leave more of the burden of supporting enrollees up to the states
"The Medicaid program is growing rapidly because health care inflation is running two to three times the general inflation rate and the case load has grown 33 percent over the last four years," according to an association statement. "We hope the Administration and Congress will work with states to develop program efficiencies and other policies that can save both the states and federal government money, as opposed to shifting costs to the states through budget cuts, caps or other mechanisms."
In Gregg's view, "There is a lot of spending in Medicaid that could be done more efficiently. I believe if the federal government gives the state a smaller rate of increase in Medicaid but a greater range of flexibility, you will probably get better services for a lower rate of growth."
A spokeswoman for Rep. Charles Bass said Thursday that the congressman will work to ensure that [Medicaid] coverage is secured. "As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Bass will have a unique opportunity to evaluate and craft any measures taken to modernize the Medicaid system," Margo Shideler said. "And certainly his top priority in doing this would be to ensure that none of these updates would adversely affect New Hampshire's Medicaid system and those who depend on it ."
Education groups also are concerned about shortfalls. To help pay for expansion of the No Child Left Behind program, the president proposed cuts to programs such as Vocational Education State Grants and Teach-Prep Education State Grants, which administration officials said Monday can be made up in the new High School Initiative, the proposed secondary school phase of No Child Left Behind.
"This is the first budget in a decade that will actually cut money for education, a 0.9 percent decrease," said Daniel Kaufman, a spokesman for the National Education Association. "If the president's budget were adopted today, there would be a $12 billion shortfall on top of an existing $27 billion shortfall, making it a $39 billion shortfall overall."
"States and school districts have budget crises of their own and are struggling to meet the stringent requests of No Child Left Behind, and those costs are rising," he said. " The focus should be on fixing flaws of the No Child Left Behind as it stands and to get the funding to get job done."
Bradley, in response, said: "I think we have to look at it, but its not just education, it's all the other areas the president has cut, for instance agriculture subsidies. We have to make sure that government money is spent in the most efficient way possible to make a more efficient delivery of services."
"There are going t o be a number of very difficult choices that we have to make if we are going to get our fiscal house in order," he said.
Bass said in a written statement that although he believes "President Bush's proposal provides a firm foundation on which Congress will structure a sound and restrained budget for the 2006," he has concerns about the cuts in education spending. " These programs are vital to the well-being of countless Americans, and I remain committed to ensuring the government meets its obligations to them."
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Sununu Defends Bush Social Security Plan
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 -Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) on Thursday defended President Bush's plan to revamp Social Security by creating personal retirement accounts.
Sununu spoke during a panel discussion held at the National Press Club. The panel, which also included Paul Krugman, the New York Times economic columnist; Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.); and Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, met to debate the president's proposals put forth in Wednesday's State of the Union address.
"There's already an enormous debt burden out there, and it comes in the shortfall of Social Security today," Sununu said. The Social Security Administration estimates the program's shortfall to be approximately $10 trillion, he added.
"That's the liability, the shortfall that faces our children and grandchildren today, and that's the whole reason we should be having this discussion," he said.
"The problem is inherent in the way the system is designed," Sununu said, adding that Social Security's founders did not foresee the shift in demographics over the past 75 years, including increased life expectancy.
Last session, Sununu, along with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), introduced a bill that would have changed the current system, in which workers pay taxes to support current retirees, to one that allows workers in enhance their Social Security benefits by investing a portion of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts. This plan, Sununu argued, would provide a rate of return of 6 percent to 8 percent.
Krugman disagreed with Sununu's prediction of generous rates of return. "The same things that drive those concerns about Social Security also drive the lower growth rate," Krugman said. "Which makes it quite hard to understand, even if that was the story, how stocks are to earn the same rate of return they did over the past 75 years."
He also argued that the projected rates of return are unrealistic given the higher costs of stocks and bonds, which resulted from increased investment in the stock market since the 1970s.
"Stock ownership has broadened," he said. "As a result, stocks are more expensive then they used to be." Because investors now pay more to buy shares, rates of return in the future will be "substantially lower," he said.
Much of the panel's debate centered on how to secure against stock market losses.
"Under the Sununu-Ryan plan, under the president's plan, under almost every one of these investment plans that I've seen there is a guaranteed minimum benefit," Moore said. "So the idea that senior citizens are going to be thrown out on the street and that grandma is going to have to eat cat food and so on, it just isn't true."
But Corzine said that "there is a sharp difference [between] what those minimums are to be and what Social Security benefits are today, and one can argue about whether that minimum benefit is actually realistic. Better hope that personal accounts make up that difference or we're going to end up with sharply rising poverty levels among our seniors."
Sununu acknowledged that he and the president differ in some ways on personal retirement accounts.
Under the president's proposal workers would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their pay into their personal accounts up to a $1,000 maximum per year, with a $100 increase in that ceiling every year, according to the Associated Press.
"One modest suggestion I would have for the president is to allow a bump, an early bump, of say 10 percent of the first $10,000 you earn and then 4 percent after that, so those earning say $20,000 a year can really take advantage of this approach," Sununu said. "I think it would make it especially fair to the low- and middle-income purchasers."
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N.H. Delegation Backs Bush Plans
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2- New Hampshire's all-Republican Congressional delegation cheered the agenda President George Bush announced last night during the State of the Union Address.
"I think the president's speech was probably the strongest and clearest State of the Union I've heard in my eight years in Congress," Sen. John Sununu said after the speech. "I think his vision is a powerful one."
The President's hour-long speech focused primarily on his Social Security plan and included an outline of how personal retirement accounts would work and offered evidence on the importance of solving the problem this congressional session. Both New Hampshire senators are expected to play central roles in the already contentious debate on the issue.
"It's like that old ad, you can pay me now or pay me later," Sen. Judd Gregg said in a statement. "And the sooner we get on it, the less it's going to cost the American taxpayers to make sure that our children have the same lifestyle we have, maintain the lifestyle of the entire population."
Sununu agreed. "We certainly need to solve [Social Security] within our children's lifetime.
"Democrats seem to insist that there's no problem at all. It's unconscionable to pretend that the system is not in danger," he added. "The fact that the number of spenders per worker. went down from 30 to 2 workers presents a serious problem.... They looked like they were sticking their heads in the sand, like the problem didn't exist, and they refuse to offer any ideas."
On the foreign policy side, Bush built upon his recent inaugural address. Offering recent democratic elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as proof the fight to spread democracy is taking hold in the Middle East, Bush called for the expansion of freedom around the world.
Sununu, who observed the Palestinian elections, said the $350 million in aid the president promised for security, economic and political reforms there was a "very significant commitment."
"I think it's the right response given the steps already made in putting forces on the Gaza border," he continued. "That money will be well received and I think the new Palestinian leadership has shown a commitment to real reform."
Bush also touched on other domestic issues including the environment, education, health care and immigration. He also called on Congress to cut the deficit in half over the next four years while maintaining tax cuts and revamping Social Security.
"It can be done if Congress has the will to do it," Gregg said in an interview. "We need to bring fiscal order to our house. It is very important and maintaining the tax policy helps Americans keep more of their money."
"I think he laid out and intense agenda and we do need to continue to work on the prosperity of our country and that's why tax simplification is important," Rep. Jeb Bradley said in an interview. "I am a member of the Budget Committee now and I will work to cut unnecessary programs and make mandatory programs more effective and cut out wasteful spending wherever possible."
Rep. Charles Bass said he agreed with Bush on most issues but thought his Clean Skies Act should go further. "His Clean Skies act isn't helpful, and it doesn't address long term automobile gas emission elimination," Bass said in an interview. "My bill establishes a carbon monoxide framework which I think is an important framework to address the issue of global warming."
New Hampshire Senators Propose Agendas of Their Own
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27-Social Security and terrorism top the agendas of New Hampshire's two Republican senators as well as those of President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
On Monday, Frist revealed the Senate's first 10 bills, which are traditionally the majority party's top priorities for the session. If the list of bills is an accurate guide, a Social Security overhaul, bioterrorism protection, health care reform, various forms of tax relief, tort reform, energy policy, job training and education initiatives will dominate the debate.
Sen. Judd Gregg, who worked with the party leaders on the Republican agenda, found his bioterrorism bill, BioShield II, third on the list.
The bill would expand the vaccination development and medical deployment programs created under Project BioShield, which Congress enacted last session. The idea is to better protect the nation from attacks with biological agents such as anthrax, smallpox and botulism.
"The bill passed last year was a good start, but we haven't fully developed a scenario where we're going to get drug companies to begin," Gregg said in an interview. "You need tremendous capital to back up vaccine development and research, and this is a way to do that, to make it clear to the production community that one, there is going to be a market--the government--and that market is easily accessible, and two, that they will have the protection that is going to be reasonable to make that investment."
Under the legislation, drug companies would get full patent restoration for product development in addition to grants and tax-based initiatives for construction and renovation of vaccine production facilities. Also, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would establish "fast track reviews" for second-generation vaccines.
Number one on the top 10 list, however, was Social Security, in particular proposals to create personal accounts where workers can squirrel away some of their tax dollars for retirement.
Last session, Sen. John E. Sununu co-sponsored a bill that would have established optional personal retirement accounts. Under this plan, those over 55 would be guaranteed the same benefits they are already entitled to, while those under 55 could enhance those benefits, Sununu suggested, by investing a portion of their payroll taxes in the accounts.
"These personal accounts will have a much higher rate of return than we can expect from Social Security," Sununu said in an interview. "With such a high rate of return, more resources will be available to pay for the benefit in the future and will help eliminate the $12 trillion shortfall that exists if we do nothing."
" Members of both parties recognize that action must be taken to ensure that future generations of retirees are able to receive Social Security benefits," Sununu said in a statement. "The issue is complex and there are many naysayers in Congress, however, I think the chances are 'good' that there will be congressional action on Social Security reform this year."
Gregg, who also supports the creation of personal accounts, said he hopes reform will occur this session but warned, "It's an uphill fight because it's a very political issue, and sometimes politics overwhelms good policy and sometimes the policy is very beneficial to the future generations."
Though both senators subscribe to the Republican leadership's agenda, they have their own lists of bills marked top priority.
Sununu said he would continue his battle to give the federal government jurisdiction over telephone calling via the Internet (so-called voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP). Sununu introduced legislation last session along with Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin.
"It is important to prevent 50 different states from trying to regulate these Internet-enabled services in 50 different ways," Sununu said in the interview. "The aim is to avoid harmful and fragmented regulations that would discourage people from investing in broadband and new networks..
"These are national and global networks, so if you want to offer IP video or voice service they [regulations] should be established on a federal level."
For Gregg, drug reimportation from Canada and other Western nations also will take center stage. He has filed a bill that would give the FDA authority to ensure that reimported drugs are safe by certifying Web sites and overseas pharmacies as safe venues to purchase medications.
In the past, Bush has shown skepticism about reimportation plans, saying he would approve them only if he thought the safety of drugs could be certified. Gregg is confident that his bill addresses the President's concerns.
"If we were to pass the bill he might not sign it, but he won't openly oppose it, I don't think. But I don't know that," Gregg said, adding that he has not spoken about it with the president. "But I was told at the FDA they can do it, and the bill creates a new fee structure to get the money they need to do it."
Gregg, in his new role as Budget Committee chairman, will be looking for ways to reduce the budget deficit. He also plans to push to continue the education reform started by the No Child Left Behind Act.
Sununu's agenda includes legislation to create a stronger regulatory body to control government-sponsored housing enterprises, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to ensure that they stay solvent and repay trillions of dollars in debt.
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