Remarks to the western New York community in Buffalo

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 25, 1999

Even before that, by 2010, the Medicare fund will run out of money. Why? Because the fastest growing group of people - this is a high-class problem; this is a high-class problem; we should be so lucky to have only problems like this - the fastest growing group of people in America are people over 80. And I hope to be one some day, and so do you, right? And so does - I hope, every child in this audience will live to be over 80. The kids in this audience actually will have a life expectancy of about 85 years if medical science keeps advancing.

But the older you get, the more you need a doctor, or the more you need drugs or the more you need something just to kind of get through the day. I'm finding that out already. [Laughter] Everything kind of hurts when it's cold, and you've got to stretch your legs more. So that's going to happen by 2010.

So what I said last night is not as popular as what others can tell you. Others can say, "We've got this surplus now. I just want a big tax cut. I'll give it back to you. You'll figure out what to do with it." But I believe if we save 60 percent of this surplus for Social Security, here's what we can do. We can make the Trust Fund all right to 2055. We can protect Social Security for 55 years. We have a list of other options that are all a little controversial, but if we can get the Republicans and Democrats to hold hands, we could do it. It wouldn't hurt anybody very much. They're really good things for the program over the long run.

And if we did that, we could protect Social Security for 75 years, and we could reduce the poverty rate among elderly women on Social Security. They're twice as likely to be poor. And we could remove the earnings test which now limits what seniors on Social Security can earn for themselves. So I think that's a good use of the surplus that will help our parents, our children, our grandchildren.

Now, same thing with Medicare. If we just save one-sixth - one in very $6 of this surplus - for 15 years, and set it aside for Medicare, then we save Medicare to 2020. Then if we can get the Republicans and Democrats together - and in March we're going to have a report from a bipartisan commission that will start the debate - we can make a few other changes, save it till 2020, and begin to provide for prescription drugs. It's the single, biggest need that senior citizens on Medicare have.

Now, let me tell you what else you'll get. You're going to have everybody say that Government doesn't know how to spend this money. Look, folks, Social Security and Medicare work. I'm not talking about spending this money, I'm talking about saving it.

Now, here's what I think about it. This is the other thing I want you to understand. If we save three-quarters of this surplus for 15 years only, to solve Social Security and solve Medicare well into the 21st century, what else will happen? We will, by holding this money - we've got to do something with it. What do you do with this money? You buy back the privately held debt. We will be reducing the debt of the country. We will take the debt of America in relationship to the size of our economy, the level of debt held by the public, to its lowest level since before World War I in 1917.