Stop Government Propaganda Act

STOP GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA ACT -- (Senate - January 26, 2005)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this morning's Washington Post contains a story about yet another case of the Bush administration apparently using taxpayer dollars to try to buy favorable news coverage of their most controversial proposals.

In a column she wrote for the National Review Online, the conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher wrote that the administration's marriage initiative could ``carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children.'' In fact, the big payoff so far appears to be to Ms. Gallagher herself.

According to the Washington Post, Miss Gallagher received $21,500 from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services in the year 2002 to promote the Bush administration's marriage initiative. She received an additional $20,000 from the administration for writing a report entitled ``Can Government Strengthen Marriage?''

Last year, Miss Gallagher defended the administration's proposal for a Federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in her columns, interviews, and television appearances. She also testified in favor of such an amendment before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I have her testimony.

I have attended many meetings of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It appears we will now need to ask each witness who apparently comes from the outside whether they are on the inside. Miss Gallagher was on the inside. She was such an insider that she was paid handsomely by some in the administration for her ``objective'' views on administration policies.

This is the third time in less than a month we have heard allegations of political payola by the Bush administration. It troubles me. I can recall recently being on FOX--I know you are surprised if you follow the newscast to know that I would go on FOX, but occasionally I think it is good for them to meet a Democrat--I went on Chris Wallace's Sunday show. We were joking ahead of time about Armstrong Williams. I said: Chris, before you ask me any questions on FOX, I have to ask you, Are you being paid by the administration to ask these questions? We laughed about it. But there is nothing funny when we hear about Miss Gallagher and Armstrong Williams. We learned the Federal Department of Education paid well-known conservative commentator Armstrong Williams--get this--$240,000 to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind Act in television and radio appearances. Picture this. We come to the Senate lamenting the fact the administration does not have enough money to send to our schools to help failing children do better on tests and improve their education.

The administration says: We can't afford this; we do not have the money to help children in school. But they found almost a quarter of a million dollars for Mr. Armstrong Williams to tout their program and do so in a way that was deceiving.

Mr. Williams, an African American, was hired by the Education Department to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show to urge other Black journalists to do the same. As part of the agreement, Williams was required to regularly comment on No Child Left Behind during the course of his broadcast, and to interview with Secretary Rod Paige from the Department of Education for TV and radio reports that aired on the show during 2004.

We learned earlier this month from the New York Times that the Bush administration is planning a new propaganda campaign. According to the New York Times, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a marketing campaign to sell the false claim that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action. The new campaign would support the administration's highly controversial desire to partially privatize Social Security.

There used to be a time when our Government would let the facts speak for themselves. It apparently is the position of the Bush administration that the facts in and of

themselves are not articulate; you need to have people to articulate the point of view to put the appropriate political spin on that point of view so the public can understand the gravity of the issue.

The American people get this and they understand it. They know the sky is not falling when it comes to Social Security. They know, as we have proven time and time again, left untouched, without a single change, no revision in the law, Social Security as a program will make every payment it has promised to make, with a cost-of-living adjustment every single year to every Social Security recipient, and it will do so until 2042, by one estimate, or 2052 by another, 37 years of solvency in the Social Security system.

The President today said we want permanent solvency in the Social Security system. Wouldn't it be great if we could say that? The President cannot even promise that next year his budget deficit projection is going to be accurate. He wants us to say 47, 57, 87 years from now Social Security will never have a problem. We cannot do that. We do not know what is going to befall this Nation.

Who would have known in the early 1950s about a birth control pill? Who would have known about the advances in medicine in the 1960s? Who would have known that we were going to enact Medicare so seniors would live longer? Who would have known that we were going to have demographic changes in America reflecting immigration to this country?

We do not know those answers. We speculate and try to make our best guess as to where Social Security will be. If the President wants us to stand here and say with a straight face that we have guaranteed permanent solvency for the Social Security system, it can never be done. Neither can he predict with any certainty, as he has proven, what his own budget deficit will be a year or 2 years from now.

Now they start the propaganda campaign through the Social Security Administration which is supposed to line up the ad agencies to convince the American people the sky is falling on Social Security and the only cure is to take money out of the Social Security system, cut Social Security benefits, and increase the deficit in America by $2 trillion in the first 10 years. This retirement roulette which this administration is pushing says to retirees that they should take money out of Social Security and play the stock market.

Make no mistake, many Americans, including my family, invest in mutual funds and in the stock market. We are doing OK. We have good years and bad years. There is no guarantee. As they say over and over on their ads, last year's performance is not a predictor of what next year's performance will be. There is uncertainty and risk.

If we take money out of Social Security to play retirement roulette in the stock market, we leave retirees vulnerable. Assume for a second we figure out how to pay for it, which the President has not, but if the retirees guess wrong, what will happen? What if today's retiree receiving $1,200 a month from Social Security receives only $600 a month? How do they survive? If they are lucky they have savings and maybe a family to support them. But if they are not, where do they turn? They turn back to the government. They say to the government: We guessed wrong. We invested wrong.

That is what the President thinks is the way to assure

the American people of the solvency and reliability of Social Security.

It appears he is not doing very well convincing Members of Congress of either political party. So they have decided they need the Social Security Administration to come up with a technical plan. This chart, which will be difficult if not impossible to read by those following this on television, lays out the objectives of the Bush administration's marketing tactical plan in the Kansas City region when it comes to the current Social Security system. The American people are not buying the President's message. He hires an advertising firm, a marketing firm, to try to convince them that what he says is true. The facts, obviously, cannot speak for themselves. This marketing firm has to convince the American people of the ability of the Social Security Program to pay promised benefits to current and future beneficiaries. The message is, necessary reforms must take place. We must address long-term solvency now. The sooner the changes are made, the more time people will have to adjust.

On and on. Staff meetings. Tactics. How to measure their success. And budget.

The Social Security Administration is no longer in the business of just telling the facts. The Social Security Administration is now in the spin business. It is supposed to color the facts, to change the story, convince the American people of something they are not believing.

My office, having obtained that, understands this is not accurate. What I have described is simply propaganda.

According to the Social Security Administration's own official numbers, the trust fund is not only solvent but running a surplus. I know that to be a fact because I happened to have served in Congress when we made a conscious bipartisan decision in the middle 1980s. President Ronald Reagan--no question about his Republican credentials--went to Tip O'Neill, the leading Democrat in Congress, and said: Mr. Speaker, we need to get together. Baby boomers are coming and we need to be prepared. And changes were made, bipartisan changes were made.

And we bought solvency and longevity for Social Security.

We did this in the mid-1980s, and our work then guaranteed that Social Security could make its payments for 57 years. That was a heavy lift, but we did it, and we did it in a responsible, bipartisan fashion. We understand that.

There is enough money in the Social Security trust fund to pay every penny until 2042, and even after that, if we did nothing, to make 73 percent of the projected payments if we make no change in Social Security.

Now, I personally believe we should make some changes, but responsible, bipartisan changes. We can make commonsense changes in Social Security that can give it an even longer life.

When I have asked the people in Illinois, what do you think we ought to do about Social Security, do you know what they say overwhelmingly? Why doesn't the Federal Government pay back into the Social Security trust fund all the money it took out? Good question. Frankly, we were on a course to do that. When President Clinton left office 5 years ago, we were running a surplus, and with that surplus we were retiring the debt of the Social Security trust fund, paying back what the Government had borrowed from it and giving even longer life to Social Security.

Well, in came the brave, new world of the Bush administration with a new economic policy. They said: If we have a surplus, then clearly that means we need a tax cut. The Government ought to give back the money it has in surplus in Washington, ignoring the obvious, that we still had the deficits in the Social Security trust fund that needed to be addressed.

So President Bush successfully pushed through a tax cut, primarily for the wealthiest people in America, and we stopped retiring the debt of the Social Security trust fund. We not only turned that corner from surplus, we went into deficit, facing the deepest deficits in the history of the United States under the Bush Presidency. We never had larger deficits. And how do you finance a deficit? You borrow the money from the Social Security trust fund, making it even more precarious, more uncertain.

We had a plan for making Social Security strong. It was called a surplus, buying down the debt of the Social Security trust fund. The Bush administration destroyed that plan with tax cuts, with a weak economy, and with the war which is very costly not just in human terms but in terms of tax dollars.

So how do we keep Social Security solvent now facing the reality of Bush economics? Well, I think, first, we look at the obvious and we speak truth to the American people. Social Security is not in crisis. It is challenged beyond the year 2042. We need to do the right thing to make certain we meet those challenges. We do not want to misuse the resources of this program or its employees in the Social Security Administration to try to manufacture a crisis. That would be wrong, wrong to the American people.

If we cannot start the discussion on Social Security with an agreement on facts, if we cannot start with a bipartisan approach that tries to find solutions, as President Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill did, we are not likely to have success.

The Social Security Administration's ``tactical plan'' states that the agency will ``insert solvency messages in all

Social Security publications; place articles on solvency in external publications''--the list goes on and on. This is going to be a press release mill to try to gin up a crisis. Instead of objective information, we are to receive from the Social Security Administration the political spin, the best possible spin on the President's Social Security proposal.

There are several propaganda tactics, all of which are evident in this Social Security Administration plan.

Appeal to fear--``In 2042,'' they say, ``the Trust Funds will be exhausted.'' That is not true. The trust funds will be able to make 73 percent of all payments after 2042 if we do nothing. And I have not met anybody who says we should do nothing.

Appeal to authority--``The President has said that reform is easier to implement if done far in advance.'' You cannot quarrel with that premise. What we did in the mid-1980s bought us over 50 years of solvency. What we do in 2005 can buy us even further longevity and permanency in Social Security.

Then: Glittering generalities. Here is one that is used in the Social Security Administration propaganda plan: ``Longer, healthier lives mean change is needed in long-term Social Security financing.'' Well, you cannot argue with that. If people are going to live longer, people are going to have to pay out more. But let's be honest about how much we are going to pay out.

Then: The bandwagon effect they are trying to create: ``On December 21, 2001, the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security issued its report [according to this tactical plan], which outlined three alternative models for Social Security reform.''

What the talking points the Social Security Administration wants to share with the American people fail to mention is that President Bush charged the Commission with finding a way to make privatizing Social Security work. This Commission was not given a blank slate. They were told what their goal was: Get in that room and don't come out until you have justified privatizing Social Security.

Also missing from the plan is any mention of a crucial fact: By diverting $1 or $2 trillion--with a ``T,'' trillion--away from Social Security and into private investment accounts, risky investment accounts, just in the first decade, the administration's privatization plan would actually make Social Security weaker. It would change what we have as today's challenge into a real crisis.

At the time the Armstrong Williams payoff story broke, Mr. Williams reportedly told a journalist for another publication: ``There are others.''

Well, how many columnists are on the administration's payroll? How many people will you watch on the nightly news tonight who are receiving some sort of a payola check from the administration to give you the facts ``straight,'' to be ``fair and balanced''? The honest answer is, we do not know. More are coming to light every day.

There are indications we have serious problems. In the past year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, Congress's watchdog agency, has released two legal analyses finding that two Government agencies violated the Government's prohibition on publicity and propaganda.

The prohibition against using taxpayer dollars and Government agencies to produce propaganda was put in place in 1951, during the McCarthy era. The prohibition was intended to balance the duty of Federal agencies to provide information with the not uncommon urge to try to manipulate public opinion. We said, 50 years ago, it was wrong. It is still wrong today.

According to the GAO, the Office of National Drug Control Policy violated the publicity and propaganda prohibition when it produced and distributed fake news stories called ``video news releases'' as part of its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The GAO concluded that the agency's fabricated news stories were nothing less than ``covert propaganda.''

In a separate report, the GAO found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services violated the publicity and propaganda prohibition by disseminating fake news stories touting the supposed benefits of the new prescription drug law.

The stories featured phony reporters telling viewers that ``all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending.'' That is simply not true.

The bill that is going to be introduced next week by Senators LAUTENBERG and KENNEDY will clarify congressional intent in the 1951 law. I am happy to cosponsor this legislation.

Among other things, our bill will make it clear that any news releases that do not clearly identify the Government as their source are prohibited. No more Government propaganda masquerading as independent news.

Our bill will prohibit using taxpayers' dollars to try to buy favorable news coverage and manipulate public opinion.

Our bill will contain teeth. The agencies that violate the prohibitions will get more than a slap on the wrist. The Federal Government has a responsibility to be honest with the American people, to give them truthful information.

In the 3 years since we passed No Child Left Behind, the administration has refused consistently to fund the law. In all, the President's proposed budgets have shortchanged No Child Left Behind by a total of $26 billion.

Ask someone from Colorado, or from Florida, or from any State in the Union; the same thing is being said by school boards and school districts: Thank you for the Federal mandate of No Child Left Behind. Where are the resources to help the kids, who have fallen $26 billion short of what we planned on funding for this program?

Americans, when given the facts, understand the realities and make sensible choices.

Thomas Jefferson famously said that if he had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would go with the newspapers. Jefferson understood that access to reliable, accurate information is essential to democracy. So did another one of my heroes, a former newspaperman with whom many of us had the good fortune to work.

The late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois was a great journalist and a great public servant, my closest friend in politics, my predecessor in the Senate. When he was 19 years old, he dropped out of college and bought a weekly newspaper in Troy, IL. He used his paper to tackle crime and corruption. He understood that good government and good journalism are not mutually exclusive; they are inseparable.

Americans today are faced with many serious questions, concerning the education of our children, the cost and quality of health care, whether our sons and daughters will be sent to war, and how secure our retirement will be. Government propaganda denies people the information they need to make wise choices and erodes our faith in Government.

What we need is not propaganda but a commitment to truth and faith in the ability of the American people to make the right decisions.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

(The remarks of Mr. ALLARD, Mr. SALAZAR, and Mr. McConnell pertaining to the introduction of S. 186 are located in today's RECORD under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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