Thomas Foley: “I will tell you what I am hearing in my community from younger generations, baby boomers. They are suggesting maybe some…”

“I will tell you what I am hearing in my community from younger generations, baby boomers. They are suggesting maybe some day we should experiment with privatization of Social Security. We are not certainly calling for that under this act. We do not even talk about privatizing Social Security. But some of our future generations may decide instead of buying these nonnegotiable Treasury bills, they would rather have a chance to have some investments in mutual funds. So maybe the government no longer is the arbiter of what is the best investment for families. Maybe we are able to turn away from the government and say let the private sector determine, and yet preserve some security. I wanted to be very careful and state carefully for seniors that are listening tonight, we are not talking about privatizing your Social Security system. We are talking about preserving and protecting. What we are talking about is 30 years from now when we pay off the huge debt that this Congress has run up for the past 40 years, we are talking about making for the first time meaningful financial reform of our government so that we expect from our government the same we expect from our families. I will tell you and I will claim as I have done in my district, if a family bounces checks the way we bounced our budget, they would be arrested and charged with theft and a crime.”