Before I begin, I want to give everyone a Social Security card showing them how many of their constituents are Social Security recipients. While today’s hearing will discuss devastating effects of Social Security Identity theft, I think we need to continue to address a different theft. The truth is, with each paycheck American’s pay into an insurance program- its right there in the name “Federal Insurance Contributions Act”- so that when they retire, they can continue to live with dignity.
It is not a Socialist hand out, but an earned benefit. It is not a result of bloated government spending, but an insurance premium. More than 65 million Americans receive Social Security. These are your brothers, sisters, parents.
More than 10,000 Baby Boomers a day qualify. By the end of 2023, that’s 70 million people relying on Social Security. Each Congressional district has on average 145,000 Social Security recipients.
Mr. Chairman, the month of May, designated 60 years ago, by President John F. Kennedy as Older Americans Month and in 1965 President Johnson signed it into law to bring forward the issues important to Social Security beneficiaries.
Yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, have supported cuts that will hurt current and future beneficiaries and are standing with Speaker McCarthy who has manufactured a debt ceiling crisis and is threatening to topple the world economy for the purpose of sending your grandmother less than her $1500 month lifeline! This is cruelty, callousness and carelessness. This is money they paid into the system.
You cannot hold it for a few more years as a political tool to punish the poor and elderly. I am from the Insurance capital of the world, and I went to the Aetna School. You cannot change the terms of the insurance contract simply for your convenience.
If you pay into FICA for a lifetime, you should not retire into poverty. I want to trust the gentlemen on the other side of the dias but I have a healthy skepticism since every single member of the Republican side of this Subcommittee is a member of the Republican Study Committee.
There are 175 House Republicans on the RSC. The Republican Study Committee’s “Blueprint to Save America” would cut $729 billion from Social Security in the next 10 years. It calls for 20 separate cuts, and 20% across the board cuts.
Also present in the RSC Plan is a cut to the Social Security Administration. The SSA administers benefits to 65 million Americans and it never missed a payment. The SSA operates on, what we in the insurance business, call a 1% loss ratio.
Their efficiency is truly astounding yet we know their staff need more resources for training, technology and to replace an aging workforce. In our discussions, Mr. Ferguson has said he will protect Social Security, so I am glad to see that he is distancing himself from the RSC Plan today.
More than 5 million people receive a below poverty-level check from Social Security despite a lifetime of work- most of them women. Over 8.5 million veterans received Social Security benefits in 2021. 148,000 people in the district I represent receive Social Security benefits each month.
If we do not act, automatic cuts will begin in 2033. And it will further underscore what Roosevelt said about a government that fails to act for its people, that it is frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Do not think you can talk but not act. Seniors and the disabled are getting by on less because of Congressional negligence.
I encourage us to come together, in a vitality of ideas. Social Security is suffering from Congressional Neglect. Congress must vote.
Over the last few years between the global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues, who has suffered the most? Seniors over 65, most on fixed incomes. More than 855,000 of them died due to COVID. We cannot allow Congressional inaction, frozen in our own indifference, be the cause of their suffering.
I applaud acting on behalf of the victims of identity theft and seeking long-term solutions, but we must look at the big picture too. We sit here, on the committee of cognizance, and we must act.
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