Doris Matsui: “I appreciate the Chair of the subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, his discussion. I just…”

“I appreciate the Chair of the subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, his discussion. I just want to point out, the President had said during the campaign of 2000 that he wanted to reform Social Security. He came up in 2001, December of 2001, with a commission report and three recommendations all dealing with privatization of Social Security. The gentleman himself has come up with a privatization plan. We still have not seen Social Security reform in the committee, nor have we seen it on the floor of the House. Initially, I was hoping to take care of the GPO under Social Security reform. Obviously, we cannot do it because there is no intention of bringing Social Security reform to the House floor until after the 2004 election, after the President presumably is reelected. So it is unfortunate we have to deal with this issue now. I also want to say that with respect to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), he was trying to deal through the whole issue of corporate shelters with things like the Bermuda inversion issue, in which companies in the United States went offshore in order to avoid U.S. taxes, thereby increasing taxes for individual citizens. These are the things that he has been working on. Lastly, this is about the government pension offset, to a large extent; it is not about loopholes.”