Saving Social Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about the Nation's number one insurance program, Social Security.

It has been that way since Franklin Delano Roosevelt first introduced it. It continues to be the number one antipoverty program for the elderly and, frankly, Madam Speaker, the number one antipoverty program for children.

Yet, Congress has been derelict in its duty. There has not been a vote to enhance Social Security since 1971. Richard Nixon was President of the United States.

As we speak today, there are close to 70 million Americans who rely on Social Security. Of those 70 million, it is important to understand that 10,000 baby boomers a day become eligible for Social Security.

More than 5 million of our fellow Americans have worked and paid into a system and get below poverty-level checks from their government, the wealthiest in the world, with the Nation's number one antipoverty program that this body has not acted on in more than 50 years.

It is long overdue that we take the initiative and have a vote in the United States Congress that will help the American people.

Social Security is bedrock. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, you understand this.

Now, our colleagues on the other side have put forward something they call a study commission. We don't need to study Social Security. We know what needs to be done.

To have a study that goes behind closed doors and has an up-or-down vote that is unamendable, with no input from this body, is absurd, antidemocratic, and anti-elderly and -children from the standpoint of the havoc that it would wreak on this system.

The idea that they are doing this to save Social Security is a fallacy. They are doing it so they can go behind closed doors and cut the very program that sustains so many Americans. For more than 40 percent of all Americans who are on Social Security, this is the only pension benefit that they will have.

Madam Speaker, you know as well as I that it is not only a pension benefit. It is a disability benefit, as well as taking care of spouses and children.

Imagine, for our viewers in the audience, Congress has not taken a vote in more than 50 years for the Nation's number one antipoverty program.

It is long overdue that we not study this but do what we are elected to do by the public and actually vote.

If you have a better idea, put it out there, but we believe this, as well. I commend President Biden for saying, look, the way that we are going to pay for this is to lift the cap, or what is called Scrap the Cap, on people making over $400,000.

This past month marked when millionaires have already stopped paying into the Social Security program. Bill Gates stopped paying back in January.

That is wrong. It is not right. To lift that cap will allow us not only to extend the solvency of Social Security but increase benefits across the board for its members, to make sure that WEP and GPO, which have hurt teachers and municipal employees over the years, is finally scrapped; to have in there a tax cut for more than 23 million Americans who continue to pay taxes on their Social Security; and to make sure that everyone's benefits are enhanced.

Where does that money go, Madam Speaker? The money from Social Security goes right back into every single Congressional district, and it allows those individuals in that district to sustain themselves. Nobody's going out and buying stock options with Social Security 2100.

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