[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 22, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4966-H4970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SOCIAL SECURITY AND INEQUITIES TOWARD WOMEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to 
speak about the challenges women face to a safe and secure retirement. 
Without changes to the Social Security program, this Congress will 
continue to uphold outdated policies and programs that actually punish 
working women, divorced women, and widows.
  Every Member of Congress, regardless of which side of the aisle they 
are on, have seen the statistics that Social Security will be bankrupt 
in 2041, and that if changes are not made, all Americans will have 
guaranteed benefit cuts of more than 25 percent. That is right; if no 
changes are made, guaranteed benefits will be cut by 25 percent.
  However, what the media and political pundits have not touched on is 
the effect Social Security reform will have on women in particular.
  To begin with, Mr. Speaker, I would like to stress three important 
facts about American women and their retirement years.
  First, women are more likely to live in poverty during their 
retirement years than are men.
  Second, women are also comparatively more likely to rely on Social 
Security for the majority of their retirement income.
  Third, Social Security's future cash shortfalls pose a heightened and 
disproportionate threat to women's retirement security.
  Social Security is a plan that actually was designed in a much 
different time, in a different era, and with a different set of 
American demographics in mind.

[[Page H4967]]

  In 2005, women are stuck with a Social Security program that is 
inherently flawed and biased against their needs and concerns for the 
future.
  In 1935, when the program was first enacted, the great-grandmothers 
of today's young working women were faced with different choices and 
different futures. Few women actually went to college. Even fewer went 
to medical school or law school. Most American women, like most of our 
moms and grandmothers, stayed at home, raised children and had their 
husbands go to the traditional 9-to-5 job. Obviously, that no longer is 
the case.
  In 1935, when Social Security was created, women were not in a 
position to advocate for their interests in Congress. At that time, 
only seven women were serving in the U.S. House and just one in the 
U.S. Senate. Amazingly to today's generation of women leaders, American 
women had only had the right to vote for 15 years.
  Today times have changed and changed for the better. Today we have 69 
women Members of the House and 14 women Senators. Unlike in 1935, women 
as a group have the opportunity to affect the terms of debate over the 
future of Social Security, over the future of our retirement security.
  When we discuss any reform of the Social Security system, we must 
keep these facts in mind to guarantee that American women have their 
unique concerns addressed by this Congress.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. 
Biggert).
  Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), for organizing this important Special 
Order for this evening.
  As co-chair of the Women's Caucus and founder of the Women's Action 
Public Affairs team, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-
Waite) is a strong leader in this body, dedicated to improving the 
lives of women across the country.
  Today, headlines in the newspapers across the country continue to 
address the issue of Social Security reform as they have for many 
months now. Here on the Hill, Members on both sides of the aisle 
continue to debate the nature of this crisis and argue what they think 
are the greatest problems within the current Social Security system and 
how they think we should best address the issues.
  I do want to address the issue of women and retirement tonight, but 
first I would like to add a few comments based on our colleague from 
across the aisle who just gave a 5-minute about the state of Social 
Security.
  He mentioned that in 1998 the Democrats took up the issue of Social 
Security. I was elected in 1998, and before I was even sworn in, which 
would have taken place in 1999, I was asked to join the Senators and 
House Members, both Democrats and Republicans, who were going to the 
White House Conference on Social Security. There were 24 Senators and 
24 House Members, and I was included as one of the 24, even though I 
had not been sworn in.
  I was very proud to go, too, and we came down to Washington late in 
November. We were told we were going to solve Social Security that 
year, and by the next March we would have a bill to take to the House 
floor and to the Senate floor and we would do it early because this 
would be the first of the 106th Congress and we would have 3 months to 
do this. It would be before all of the election talks started, and we 
would be working together. I do think that Social Security reform needs 
to be bipartisan, and we are going to have to reach that in this debate 
at some time before we can find really meaningful reform.

  What happened is we came down for 3 days to this great conference. We 
had speakers the first days and learned a lot about Social Security and 
reinforced what we had believed. Then the third day, we met with 
President Clinton. We sat over at Blair House, and we talked about how 
we were going to do this bill, who was going to do this bill, who would 
be the one to put it on the table.
  The President said, I will do the bill and I will have it ready for 
you the end of December. There was a pause in my mind, because this is 
the one time that as an elected official you really have time to spend 
with your family, between Christmas and New Year's. I thought how am I 
going to go home and tell my family that I will have to be gone at that 
time, when we usually have taken our vacation, but for the good of the 
country, I will do this.
  So I went home and then came back to Washington for orientation 
meetings as a freshman, and I asked one of my colleagues who I had 
worked with during this 3-day conference, Does the President have the 
bill ready yet; I have not received a time yet that we will be coming 
back. My colleague looked at me and said, Judy, are you naive? There is 
not going to be any bill. This has been a great PR campaign but nothing 
has been done yet. It is very difficult for somebody to come up with a 
bill, and the President is not working on it.
  That was the last I ever heard of the Social Security reform for 
1998. We are still working on it, and just a couple of other things.
  Since 1935, this has been a pay-as-you-go system, and I always 
believed when I first started talking about Social Security that there 
was a little box that had my name on it and it had my benefits for when 
I retired. That is not true. We might talk about a trust fund, but this 
has been a pay-as-you-go system, and in fact the Federal Government 
cannot hold money like that in a bank account. So we have to deal with 
Treasury notes, and that is what we do now. That is what we have done.
  I am here this evening because I think if the debate goes further 
than whether or not we are going to implement personal accounts or 
raise the retirement age or have a pot of money there that we are going 
to be able to pay back now, and I think in the heat of debate that 
people fail to address the current inequities in this system that does 
single out one group of Americans, and the fact is that women, more 
than anyone else, continue to draw the short straw when it comes to 
Social Security benefits.
  Right now, too many women who reach retirement age find themselves 
widowed or single, relying on their Social Security check for over half 
of their income. Women live an average of 5\1/2\ years longer than men, 
and consequently, they disproportionately rely on Social Security for 
their entire retirement income.
  I can remember going door to door and going to the house of a woman 
who must have been about 95 at the time. She had been living on her 
Social Security check, which really did not give her even the money to 
be able to pay her rent and to be able to buy her food and such for a 
long retirement.
  It is great that people are living longer, and this is what we want, 
but our Social Security system was not set up for that. It was set up 
at a time when people lived to be age 60 and the retirement age was age 
65. It was easy to pay out the benefits then because there were not 
that many people that received them.
  Now women represent 58 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries 
age 62 and older and approximately 70 percent of beneficiaries 85 and 
older, and I think these inequities are astounding.
  The Social Security laws in the case of divorce are incredibly 
outdated. When Social Security was first created, few marriages ended 
in divorce. In fact, most of the women were nonworking. Fast forward to 
today, where the number of divorces has more than quadrupled since 1970 
and under current Social Security rules must be married for at least 10 
years to be entitled to the Social Security benefits of her husband, 
yet statistics tell us about one-third of all marriages end before 10 
years has been reached. This translates into one-third of women who 
will receive zero Social Security benefits for those years that they 
were married.
  We have all heard experts reference the fact that the number of 
divorces in our country is expected to continue rising, and almost half 
of marriages are expected to end in divorce. That is a pretty scary 
statistic, and we certainly hope that does not happen. But where does 
that leave women? Unfortunately, it leaves women, again, to bear the 
brunt of inequality.
  We, as women, have fought for equal opportunity in the workforce for 
many years. Today, women have proudly gained a strong presence in the 
workforce. Now more women than ever are doctors, lawyers, CEOs, 
scientists, engineers and politicians, to name a few.

[[Page H4968]]

                              {time}  1945

  However, the current Social Security system continues to punish these 
working women. Our 1930s-style retirement system has led to an 
astonishing two-thirds of married women who do not receive additional 
benefits from their Social Security contributions. And when it comes to 
single- and dual-earner couples with identical incomes, the single-
earner couple stands to receive the higher benefit.
  Let me cite the Smiths and the Joneses. The Smiths have an income 
only from the husband of $3,000. The Joneses have an income of $3,000; 
but the husband earns $1,500 and the wife earns $1,500. What happens is 
only the higher income is considered for retirement. So if Mrs. Smith 
is widowed, she would received $3,000. And Mrs. Jones, if she is 
widowed, she receives the $1,500, not both of those incomes.
  And worst of all, the family of a single woman who dies before 
retirement age will not get back a single dollar from the Social 
Security system regardless of how much money she contributed to the 
system over the course of her working years. Widow benefits also favor 
single-earner households over dual-earner households, unnecessarily 
penalizing a woman who has chosen a life in the workforce and makes 
less than her spouse.
  A widow is eligible for the greater of her husband's work benefit or 
her own, not both. And this translates into a potential cut in 
household income up to one-half after her husband's death.
  So women here tonight stand together to call for changes to the 
system, changes that will ensure equal treatment for women under the 
law. The status quo of Social Security in this Nation today is 
unacceptable.
  But in addition to all of the overall reforms, we need to encourage 
women from a young age to establish financial security and a sound plan 
for retirement. That is one of the reasons we have formed the Financial 
and Economic Literacy Caucus to promote financial and economic 
education. Women should be afforded the opportunities to learn the 
skills necessary to guide their financial futures and successfully 
manage their finances.
  Surveys show that girls are less likely than boys to consider 
themselves very knowledgeable or confident about money management. In 
the United States, we live under the idea that all men are created 
equal; yet within the Social Security system, all men and women are not 
treated as equal. We need to work together to establish a system that 
creates equity among all Americans, individuals, men, women, divorced 
or widow; and we should not wait to do it until 2041 when we are faced 
with a largely depleted Social Security. So let us prepare for the 
future now. I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
work together to help American women achieve financial certainty and 
equality. We must support the changes to the Social Security system to 
bring it into a new millennium so women, and all Americans, are not 
left financially unequipped, but are financially secure. I thank the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) for leading this 
Special Order tonight.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from 
Illinois (Mrs. Biggert) made some excellent points about the need to 
ensure that women are better protected in any Social Security reform 
package that comes before us. I commend the gentlewoman for taking the 
lead in the financial literacy area. I know many Members have joined 
the gentlewoman in that effort. And the more we can educate people, 
particularly women, the better chance they are of having a nest egg 
when they retire.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Drake), 
and I look forward to having the gentlewoman's participation in this.
  Each of us brings a different view from their States. I have the 
highest number of Social Security recipients of any Member of Congress, 
and it is always good to hear about how women in their districts are 
affected by any changes, by the need for changes in Social Security.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Drake).
  Mrs. DRAKE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. 
Ginny Brown-Waite) and thank her for her leadership in the House of 
Representatives and especially on the issue of Social Security.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue that affects millions 
of women in America. As a woman, a former business owner, now a near 
senior and soon-to-be beneficiary of the Social Security program, it is 
important to me that we have this discussion and that we take the steps 
necessary to protect women who are penalized under a system meant to 
protect them.
  I know all too well the harsh realities of the current Social 
Security system. This is not to disparage the concept of Social 
Security or to minimize its importance to millions of Americans. To the 
contrary, it is because Social Security is such an important program to 
so many that we need to have this debate. Some claim we seek to 
dismantle the program entirely when, in fact, the reverse is true. We 
seek to strengthen it for future generations. We seek to increase its 
promise of retirement security.
  Social Security is not an entitlement or welfare benefit that people 
receive for free, or worse, on the backs of other hard-working 
taxpayers. It is a retirement insurance that people pay into for their 
own future security. And as with every other type of insurance, people 
expect coverage when the time comes. They expect that when the going 
gets rough and the day arrives to call on the insurance for help, that 
help will come.
  Theoretically, Social Security should pay for itself, but currently 
it does not and costs are skyrocketing. Furthermore, I have a hard time 
even calling Social Security ``insurance'' because whether or not it is 
there for you and your loved ones seems so arbitrary today. There are 
so many contingencies and what-ifs. For example, here is a what-if, and 
it is all too real for too many women and it represents a flaw in the 
Social Security system:
  If a spouse dies, the children are grown and the surviving spouse has 
not reached retirement age, Social Security is not available until she 
is old enough to retire. It is even worse if she has never been 
gainfully employed, she has no income and finds herself searching for 
employment. If she is employed, yes, she has a paycheck, but faces a 
huge reduction in income and the reality that at retirement either her 
Social Security payments go away or his do, all those payments into the 
system gone. This is unacceptable. We need to do something about this 
now.
  First, we must enhance and strengthen Social Security by allowing 
people the opportunity to turn a small portion of their Social Security 
into a personal nest egg, one that they can leave to their family upon 
their death when their needs are the greatest.
  Second, we must ensure that positive, concrete changes are enacted to 
fix Social Security permanently and make it a solvent program. As more 
and more women own small businesses, they are more heavily impacted by 
high Social Security taxes. Women own 9.1 million businesses in this 
country, employ 27 million people, and have a $3.6 trillion impact on 
our economy.
  But Social Security is a matching system which means that each of the 
millions of employers in this Nation pays into your Social Security 
what you pay into it. You pay 6.2 percent of your paycheck into the 
program, and your employer matches that 6.2 percent with money from his 
or her own pocket. So who matches the employer's 6.2 percent? Your 
employer does. So the owners of small businesses are not only paying 
their full 12.4 percent, but the 6.2 percent of each of their employees 
as well.
  The first thing I was told as a new Realtor over 20 years ago was 
that Social Security would not fund my retirement. Today, that would 
mean the 12.4 percent into Social Security for myself, 6.2 percent for 
my assistant, plus the other retirement investments necessary to secure 
my golden years. These 9.1 million female business owners are strong, 
independent women. I was so proud to be among them for 20-plus years 
before coming to Congress.
  But having been there, I know the struggle of paying higher and 
higher Social Security taxes each year. That is why we cannot allow the 
current Social Security system to stifle their entrepreneurship. We 
must act now to protect the tax hikes or benefit cuts that will be 
inevitable if we do not.
  Mr. Speaker, I support preserving Social Security today, and I am 
pleased

[[Page H4969]]

that my colleagues have outlined a solid plan that we can begin 
debating openly before the American people. I would like to thank the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) for this opportunity 
to address the people and thank her for her service to our country.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact 
that the gentlewoman brought up the fact that a Realtor with an 
assistant is not only paying the full 12.4 percent, but also paying 
half of any clerical assistants or any Realtor assistants he or she may 
have. We often forget the small business person, and I appreciate the 
gentlewoman bringing that up.
  Now joining us, we have the gentlewoman from the great State of 
Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida 
(Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), and I thank her for her leadership on this 
issue. She mentioned earlier that she has one of the largest Social 
Security recipient populations in this country. She is passionate about 
being certain that Social Security is preserved, and I appreciate the 
attention that she puts on this issue every single day. She has been a 
champion of this, and her leadership means so much to so many of us, 
and I think to women in general.
  It is so interesting that tonight we have had a female attorney, a 
female Realtor, a female college professor, and I am a small business 
owner. We all come from different walks of life; and I would venture to 
say, as we have our town hall meetings, that is the same mix we are 
seeing, women from all walks of life who are looking at how their 
family meets their financial goals and looking at their retirement 
security. They are serious about this. They want to be certain that 
they are planning ahead. And they know that, as they pull together what 
that template is going to be for their retirement, Social Security is 
an important part of that. So they are paying attention to what we do 
and what we do not do.
  We know that the status quo is not acceptable for Social Security 
because we know what that means. We all have looked at the charts and 
at the figures, and we know we have to be aggressive and hard working 
to be certain that Social Security is stabilized, that solvency is 
guaranteed.
  We know right now there are three workers for every retiree, and soon 
that is going to change. We know by the time we get to 2018, we are 
going to stop running that surplus each year and all of those IOUs that 
have been collected are going to come due. That requires action now and 
action on our part.
  As the gentlewoman from Virginia mentioned, she was a Realtor and she 
looked at Social Security as she wrote that check for 12.4 percent: the 
individual share of 6.2 percent and the employer's share of 6.2 
percent. That means all of our small businesses, and female-owned small 
businesses are the fastest growing sector in the economy. Those women 
are writing that check for 12.4 percent. And then they come to the 
meetings, the town hall meetings that we hold, and they say if you do 
not do something soon, we are going to find out that we are paying this 
12.4 percent, and it is our money. We have earned that money. We want 
to have our name on that money, not the government; and we know we are 
never going to see it in our retirement checks.

                              {time}  2000

  Women are many times not only the small business owner, they are the 
financial manager for their family and they are looking at that pay 
stub every month and they are looking at the amount that government is 
taking out in taxes, in Social Security, and they are expecting results 
and they are expecting action to be certain that there are more options 
for them to choose from in their retirement security.
  As I said earlier, Social Security is a piece of that retirement 
security. They are also looking at long-term care. They are looking at 
long-term health care insurance. They are looking at pension plans and 
the solvency of those pension plans. They are looking at 401(k)s, and 
they want to be certain that the options are there. At the same time, 
they are wanting to be certain that it is not a burden to their 
children and grandchildren, not individually, not as we are looking at 
Social Security stabilization, not as we are looking at private 
accounts. They want to be certain that we are thoughtful, that we have 
generational fairness on the table as a component of that discussion.
  Mr. Speaker, in the last few days, we have heard quite a bit of 
rhetoric about the Social Security debate. I would applaud some of our 
Members both on the Senate side and here on the House side that are 
looking at both components of this debate, the solvency issue and the 
personal accounts issue. I applaud the fact that they are looking to be 
certain that we are going to have individuals who get their money, that 
they get back what they have put into this system, and that they can 
depend on getting those benefits.
  I think it is appropriate to know that we are really tuned toward 
being certain that Social Security meets its obligation, not only to 
today's seniors and today's near seniors but for American workers like 
my children who are in their early twenties who are looking at Social 
Security, they are paying into that system, and being certain that 
Social Security is there to meet its obligation to them.
  This is an issue that does affect all Americans. It is an issue that 
affects families. It is an issue that we are appropriately focusing on 
to find solutions addressing retirement security for all Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for her leadership 
on the issue and for organizing our time here on the floor tonight.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee for coming down this evening to share her 
views with the viewers and with the Members of Congress, because she 
certainly brings a very unique perspective.
  This brings me to the discussion of how women are treated under the 
current system. Under the current pay-as-you-go Social Security system, 
not one person is actually guaranteed benefits. Yes, you heard me 
right. Not one person is guaranteed access to the money that they 
contributed to the program over their working life. You might ask why, 
and it is actually because the United States Supreme Court has ruled 
that Social Security is not a guaranteed benefit and can be changed at 
any time by an act of Congress.
  As you can well imagine, this ruling disproportionately affects 
women, especially those women who were not in the workforce and who 
rely on their spouse's income and savings for their retirement. If a 
woman did not work and have the opportunity to save and invest on her 
own throughout her lifetime, she is often totally reliant on her family 
and Social Security for her retirement years.
  In fact, Social Security is the only source of income nationwide for 
29 percent of unmarried elderly women. That includes many widows. In my 
district, it is even higher. It is somewhere around 34 percent. Let me 
repeat that: in my congressional district, the Fifth Congressional 
District in Florida, about 34 percent of the Social Security recipients 
are unmarried elderly women. And that is their only source of 
retirement income. Social Security should certainly be there for 
elderly women during their golden years. It should not be taken away by 
the government inaction of a stubborn and hardheaded minority.
  As we have heard from the previous speakers who have been here, women 
deserve better from Social Security than what we are promised under the 
program in place today. In fact, for many women who work today, they 
are taxed their entire life without the possibility of seeing any of 
their hard-earned tax dollars returned to them.
  How, you ask? Well, in many families throughout the United States, 
both the husband and wife work outside the home, with the husband being 
most of the time the primary breadwinner. If the woman is a widow, once 
she reaches retirement, she will receive the greater of either her 
husband's benefit or her own, but not both. In some cases, the loss in 
income can be as much as a third.
  Let me just demonstrate that for you on the chart next to me of two 
families. We have two families here. We have the Smiths and we have the 
Greens. The Smiths happen to be a single-earner couple. Mr. Smith earns 
$3,000 a month, and Mrs. Smith is a

[[Page H4970]]

stay-at-home mom and earns nothing. The total Smith income per month is 
$3,000. When it comes time for retirement, Mr. Smith's monthly benefit 
is $1,300 a month. Mrs. Smith's monthly benefit is $650. The Smith's 
total benefit is $1,950.

  The dual-earner couple, Mr. Green, Mr. Green earns $2,000 a month, 
Mrs. Green earns $1,000 a month, so they have the same combined income 
as the Smiths. Their combined monthly income is $3,000. The retirement 
benefit, however, Mr. Green's monthly benefit is $1,000; Mrs. Green's 
monthly benefit is $650. The Greens' total monthly retirement benefits 
are $1,650.
  But take these same couples, the Smiths and the Greens, to make 
matters worse, under our current system when one spouse dies, the 
remaining spouse receives 100 percent of the larger earner's benefit. 
So the survivor benefit is in the Smiths' case, her monthly benefit is 
$1,300. In Mrs. Green's case, the monthly benefit is $1,000. Because 
Mrs. Green worked outside the home, she is penalized by Social Security 
upon the death of her husband. Mrs. Green will receive $300 less per 
month than Mrs. Smith just for working.
  It all began, actually, during World War II and Rosie the Riveter. 
You saw women out in the workplace and women continued to work over 
time. As you can imagine for a woman whose family relied on two Social 
Security checks before her husband's death, this can be a harsh 
financial burden. More importantly, though, if the husband dies and she 
chooses to receive her husband's Social Security benefits instead of 
her own, that means she will never receive the benefits of her own 
taxes paid over her lifetime of work.
  While women certainly have made great strides toward pay parity in 
the past 30 years, there is still a gap in earnings between men and 
women in equivalent professions. Naturally, this pay inequity will mean 
that millions of women are forfeiting their benefits that they have 
paid for and deserve. More and more women are also entering the 
workplace. In 1950, just about 30 percent of women over the age of 20 
worked either full-time or part-time. Today, that number is 60 percent. 
The more full-time women in the American workforce, the harsher the 
treatment when it comes to their retirement years.
  Despite dramatic and positive changes in the workplace, women on 
average still receive less income, have less non-Social Security 
pension coverage, and are more likely to miss productive working time 
while raising and caring for a family. These statistics highlight the 
need for equitable treatment of women in the Social Security system.
  Times certainly have changed since our Social Security system began, 
and family life has, also. Marriage in America today faces many 
challenges. We have seen a dramatic rise in the number of marriages 
that fail, and today millions of Americans divorce each year. As you 
can imagine, there are many divorced women who did not work outside of 
the home and instead chose to raise a family, which, as every woman 
knows, is a full-time job in and of itself. The Social Security system 
of the 1930s and 1940s, however, does not recognize the new world in 
which American women live.
  Let me give you a hypothetical example. Phyllis Smith was married in 
October of 1995 to Jim Franklin. Jim, a successful real estate agent in 
the suburbs, was able to bring home enough money so that Phyllis did 
not have to work outside the home. After some time, Phyllis and Jim had 
two children and a happy life-style. Unfortunately, as the years 
passed, the couple grew apart until they divorced in September 2005. In 
this case, Phyllis is entitled to absolutely none of Jim's Social 
Security benefits. However, had Phyllis and Jim waited to divorce until 
October, a mere 1-month difference, she would have been entitled to 
half of his Social Security benefit. Women should ask, how is this fair 
to Phyllis? She has a fair claim to half of every other marital asset, 
half of the house, half of his 401(k), but because Social Security has 
not addressed this problem since its inception, her retirement is 
anything but secure.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a clear example of why Social Security is a bad 
investment for women. Each year, thousands of single women who have 
never married between the ages of 25 and 64 pass away. We all know that 
heart disease is a major contributing factor along with cancer for 
early death among women. In 2001, according to the Census Bureau, 
77,851 women in this age category died. That was in 1 year alone.
  Assuming that at least three-quarters of them earned income and paid 
into the Social Security system, the hundreds of millions of dollars 
paid to Social Security by more than 55,000 women are gone. These 
hardworking women paid millions of dollars in taxes and their heirs 
will never receive a single dime for all of their years at work. Unlike 
income taxes, which go to general revenue and are used for building 
roads, maintaining an army and educating our children, today's Social 
Security taxes go to today's retirees. Your Social Security taxes do 
not get earmarked for you. As the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. 
Biggert) said, she thought that they were in a box somewhere with her 
name on it, all the money that she put into the Social Security system. 
It is not that way. You pay in today to pay the benefits of today's 
seniors.

                              {time}  2015

  The women who pass away before they receive Social Security, for them 
this is nothing but a tax from which they or their family will never 
receive a benefit. On the other end of the spectrum, these women who do 
live long enough to collect Social Security face the challenge of being 
disproportionately dependent on the Social Security system for 
retirement income. Remember I cited facts of the percentage of women in 
our country who rely only on Social Security, and that number is much 
higher particularly in many areas in Florida. Women live an average of 
5.5 years longer than men. Nonmarried women over 65 rely on Social 
Security for an average of 50 percent of their retirement income. 
Thirty-eight percent of unmarried women rely on Social Security for 90 
percent or more of their retirement income.
  These numbers make it clear that if a woman lives long enough to 
receive their benefits from Social Security that they are very likely 
to rely on that benefit as a major part of their monthly income. These 
facts are proof of the urgent need for this Congress to show some 
leadership necessary in a bipartisan manner to enact reforms that 
guarantee Social Security will be there for our future seniors and our 
current seniors when they need it the most.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, this Congress must recognize that the 
issue of Social Security reform is an important issue, and they must 
also realize how it affects women and that it is vitally important to 
the retirement of millions of American families.

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