Seniors and Veterans Emergency Benefits Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here to join the chorus for providing some additional help to our seniors on Social Security. What can I say? Here we go again. In 2010 and in 2011, America's seniors were told by the Social Security Administration there would be no cost-of-living adjustment, no increase for them, and now it is happening a third time. We all know that the price of the things seniors actually buy has continued to go up, and yet no COLA.
In 2010 and 2011 we tried to remedy that with Senator Sanders' Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act. We did not succeed. There was opposition from the other side.
We did succeed at getting a one-time $300 payment to seniors under the Economic Stimulus Act in 2008, back in the depths of the great Wall Street recession, and another $250 under the Recovery Act. So we have done this before, and it has helped. I strongly encourage that we do it.
There is a flaw built into the Social Security COLA, which is that the CPI measures things that a lot of seniors don't buy. It measures laptops, it measures flat screens, and it measures a lot of technology, but seniors in Rhode Island who make a little over $1,200 from Social Security on average aren't buying a lot of flat screen TVs and they are not buying a lot of laptops. What they are buying is fuel, medicines, food, and maybe something for the grandchildren at Christmastime, and all of that keeps going up.
We should fix that formula. There should be a CPI-E, a CPI for elderly folks that tracks what they actually spend and not some hypothetical CPI that spreads across all age groups. That would be the ultimate fix, but in the meantime, we should do this. I think it is paid for very sensibly.
I commend Senator Warren. We established as a country that beyond $1 million in executive compensation, it wasn't going to be tax deductible any longer. If you are a big corporation and you want to pay your CEO more than $1 million--fine, you still do that, but you don't get to have the American taxpayer kick in for the more-than-$1 million salary.
So what did corporate America do? They took it out of salary and they moved it over to bonuses. Now you have those big bonuses over $1 million. They dodged that exemption, and now the American taxpayer is back on the hook again to kick in for a $1 million-plus compensation package for a corporate CEO. Come on. We ought to be able to get beyond that.
So we have a way to pay for it that is fair, sensible, and consistent with the policy that we have already agreed on as a nation, which is that above $1 million in compensation, taxpayers shouldn't be kicking in any longer to help the company pay those exorbitant salaries. I think we have a very good way to spend those resources, which is helping seniors who now--for the third time since I have been in the Senate--are getting a zero COLA while everything goes up around them.
I commend Senator Warren for taking the lead, and I am pleased to be a cosponsor on her bill.
I am delighted to yield back.
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