Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) discusses the GOP legislative agenda for the 109th Congress. Reid was joined by Republican Sens. Michael Enzi (Wyo.), Rick Santorum (Penn.), Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), Mitch McConnell (Ken.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.). Here is a transcript.
FRIST: Good afternoon.
I’m here today with my Republican colleagues to announce our first 10 legislative bills. These bills will be numbered S. 1 through S. 10 and will be introduced on the Senate floor after the press conference today. We’ll be coming in in about 55 minutes or so and over the course of the afternoon they will be introduced.
These 10 bills are aimed at what the American people expect and what they deserve, and that is for us to govern with meaningful solutions. The bills reflect the aims of the Republican conference. They are bills that will directly improve the lives of Americans across this great country in meaningful ways.
They reflect good government, from S. 1, strengthening Social Security to guarantee retirement security not only for this generation, but for those generations to come, all the way through S. 10, which will move us toward a real energy independence in the future.
The slate of legislation will work toward securing a safer America, a stronger America, a freer America, a healthier America and a more prosperous America.
We will be touching upon each of the pieces of legislation. Our colleagues will be stepping up and commenting in pretty much the order, S. 1 through S. 10. The specifics and the background information will be released in a press packet sometime over the course of the next 30 minutes.
S. 1, strengthening and protecting Social Security: S. 1 has been reserved for what is probably the most important domestic legislation we will address in this Congress, and that is modernizing and strengthening the Social Security program.
FRIST: The important legislation we will handle through regular order; that means we will have it debated and considered in the Finance Committee. And I am hopeful that the legislation will, indeed, be reported from that committee with strong bipartisan support to reflect the strength and consideration by that committee. Following that, we would take it to the floor of the Senate.
For now, though, S. 1 endorses really three goals, goals that we can all agree upon. It must continue the programs of commitment to our seniors currently in retirement and those nearing retirement. Secondly, it must modernize and strengthen the program for our children and grandchildren and, really, all future generations. And, third, it must strengthen retirement income for future generations by allowing younger workers the opportunity to create voluntary personal retirement accounts that will not only enhance their future retirement income but also provide them with an opportunity to create a nest egg of wealth that can be passed on to their loved ones.
I will turn at this juncture to the chairman of the Finance Committee -- as I said, we’ll be going through regular order -- Chairman Grassley.
Let me just briefly read the rough categories of the bills, and then we’ll be able to proceed directly through them.
S. 1 is on strengthening, protecting Social Security. S. 2, tax simplification and fairness. S.3, fighting the war on terror. S. 4, a healthy America. S. 5, class action reform. S. 6, Marriage Opportunity Relief and Empowerment Act. S. 7, jobs and growth-tax relief package. S. 8, Child Custody Protection Act. S. 9, Lifetime of Education Opportunities Act. S. 10, keeping America competitive and secure through energy independence.
FRIST: With that, Chairman Grassley will speak to S. 1, Social Security and also the tax simplification. And he may have some comments to make now on S. 5, class action.
Mr. Chairman?
GRASSLEY: Since I have so many items on my agenda on this committee, I’m not going to go into very much detail with each one.
Our committee is the quality-of-life committee. And these issues deal with the quality of life of Americans. And we’re committed to improving that quality of life, whether it’s retirement and health care security, tax relief and tax reform that creates jobs and helps families or, as the leader said, court reform that puts victims first, instead of lawyers first.
The list recognizes our responsibilities to provide political leadership looking far into the future. These priorities say that we want to leave our children and grandchildren better off. We’re elected to solve problems, not to kick the can down the road or to pass them on to future generations.
For 24 years, I’ve worked in the Senate in a bipartisan way to get things done. I’ve had bipartisan success as chairman of the Senator Finance Committee. And I intend to approach these issues from that standpoint.
The president has presented bold ideas to improve economic and social being of Americans. And thank God, the president is willing to put a lot of tough issues on his agenda.
For those who say that there is no problem facing Social Security or those who want to wait and see what happens, Americans don’t want us to be a Congress that passes problems off to future generations or future Congresses. We owe it to the next generation to address these issues.
I also have my staff working on building blocks of tax reform to complement the efforts of the president’s advisory panel to simplify the tax code.
In addition, Congress needs to prevent a big blow to family budgets and the overall economy by making tax cuts permanent. The tax cuts have a record of success. Because if we don’t do something, then the average taxpayer is going to pay $1,200 a year more.
GRASSLEY: Since November of 2001, the tax cuts have contributed to 11 consecutive quarters of economic growth and nearly 1.6 million net new payroll jobs.
Finally, I’m the lead on the class action bill that’s going to be on the agenda very shortly. And these rules that we presently have on the books are being gamed and the system is rife with problems. Many class actions are just frivolous lawsuits, filed by crafty lawyers who want to make a quick buck, that do little or nothing for the consumer, but obviously do a lot to pad the pockets of lawyers.
We need to put an end to frivolous litigation tax that every consumer ends up paying.
The bipartisan class action fairness bill is designed to make sure that class members collect, and not their attorneys. It would inject fairness into the class action rules which currently keep a large majority of the class action cases in state courts.
As the 109th Congress gets up and running, I look forward to addressing these challenges.
FRIST: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think we’ll turn to Senator Santorum, S. 1, Social Security, and then following that we’ll move to S. 3 with the war on terror.
Rick?
SANTORUM: Thank you, Bill. And I appreciate the great work that you have done in pulling this list together and I think rightly ordering our priorities for these 109th Congress.
As many of you know, I’ve been very involved in the issue of Social Security and will continue to do so. And I think it’s vitally important to understand that telling future generations of Americans that, "We don’t share your pain, we don’t see a problem because it’s not a political problem for us today; it may be a real problem for you in the future, but since it’s not a political problem for us today, we’re just going to pass the buck."
I understand how members of Congress would want to do that. I understand why taking on tough issue such as Social Security is something that you’d rather just pass on to the next Congress or the next generation. But that is not the responsible thing to do.
And I give a lot of credit to the president and to our leader and the leadership and to our conference for our willingness to stand up and put this as a number one priority.
This is not an easy political thing to do. It is the right thing to do, and that is to see a problem that we know is coming and to try to do something about creating wealth, creating opportunity, and making something very positive happen when all the options down the road are negative.
I’ve heard many others on the other side of the aisle say, "Well, we can just fix it the way we fixed it in the past," or "We can fix it the way we fixed it in 1983." I just want to remind people how they fixed it in 1983. They raised the retirement age and they increased taxes.
SANTORUM: Now, if you believe that that’s the way we want to fix things when the time comes down the road, fine. We can wait and fix it that way. And that certainly will be some of the highest options that will be available.
That is not the responsible way to do it. That doesn’t transform what could be a system that is going to provide lower benefits and higher taxes in the future to a system that can provide real wealth, real opportunities and real stability and security for future generations of Americans without doing anything to harm the benefits of current retirees.
That’s what we have before us. That’s the challenge. That’s the opportunity. What we have are people who are willing to play politics with that unfortunately, too many so far.
I’m hopeful -- in fact, optimistic -- that we’ll have some brave souls on the other side join some brave souls on this side and take on a task that we know is before us and have the courage to do it the right way.
