[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 48 (Thursday, April 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1939-H1945]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional 
Progressive Caucus. We are here today to talk about a specific item in 
the President's budget, and that item is the chained CPI in Social 
Security.
  The chained CPI is an idea that originated with the Republicans and 
was included in the President's budget as a way to try to convince them 
to come to the table and have a budget for the Nation. But the chained 
CPI is more than that. We have a problem with the way the chained CPI 
works.
  Chained CPI. No one in the real world talks about chained CPI. It's 
like sequester. I don't know a single person who tells their child, I'm 
going to sequester your toys.
  Chained CPI is another Washington idea. What that idea is, in 
layman's terms, is essentially a cut in how people will receive the 
cost of living increase for Social Security. A real important way to 
talk about this is currently the consumer price index is how we 
determine any increases to people who receive Social Security.

                              {time}  1530

  When you do the chained CPI, it takes the rate that we provide for 
that cost of living increase and changes the cost of living increase in 
a different way that makes it a smaller increase for people who receive 
that.
  The problem is specifically for seniors and disabled and children who 
are receiving Social Security. Seniors, especially, pay about 20 
percent to 30 percent of their incomes on health care, and health care 
costs have risen more than the consumer price index or the cost of 
living increases that people have had. So by doing the chained CPI, 
essentially it is a cut in Social Security to people who need it the 
most.
  There is a famous Midwesterner, a former Senator from the State of 
Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey who once said:

       The moral test of government is how that government treats 
     those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who 
     are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are 
     in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the 
     handicapped.

  Our moral test today is Social Security. It's our moral promise to 
seniors for their economic security. That promise comes in the form of 
Social Security.
  It's also our promise to veterans, to people with disabilities and to 
our children and orphans in this country. If we break that American 
promise by moving to a chained CPI, it'll have real consequences to 
real people.
  Granted, this was a Republican proposal that the President included. 
This is a Republican idea that the President included in his budget in 
order to try to get them to the table. Nonetheless, it is a bad idea no 
matter where it comes from.
  Let me give you a little example about the amount of cuts that would 
be provided on average to some seniors through this. Benefits for 
someone who's 75 years old would see $658 less a year. If you're 85 
years old, you would see $1,147 less a year. If you're a 95-year-old, 
you would see $1,622 less a year. And for our 3.2 million disabled 
veterans in this country who sacrificed for our country, it means they 
would see reduced disability in Social Security benefits as well.
  These cuts grow deeper and deeper, as I explained, the older you get, 
but they also are especially hard on women in this country. Women have 
longer life expectancies. They rely more on their income from Social 
Security, and they already are more economically vulnerable than men.
  Let me give you an example of what this means in real terms.
  My mother is 84 years old. My father died in 1991, and she has been 
alone all those years living on Social Security. I called her and I 
asked her specifically what she gets from Social Security every month. 
She gets $1,101 a month. That comes out to $13,212 annually.
  I asked her to break out her expenses for me. I went through every 
possible expense that we could, just to get an idea of what it's like 
to be 84 and to be on a modest income. I grew up in a lower middle 
class family. She's already gone through most of her savings, living to 
84. Her mother lived to 101. Should her genes hold out, her savings 
will definitely not hold out that amount of time.

[[Page H1940]]

  First of all, her utilities, her gas, electric and her water bill 
come to $130 a month. She said she spends $40 to $50 for groceries and 
other essentials a week. That comes to an average of $180 a month.
  The average senior's health care is 20 percent to 30 percent of their 
income. That's why the chained CPI is especially hard on seniors, 
because it's such a large percent of their income, because so much of 
their income goes to health care, whether it's copayments, prescription 
drugs, or other needs. So with that income of $13,212, let's just go 
right down the middle and take 25 percent. That's $275 on average a 
month.
  Her car insurance and home insurance averages out to $77 a month. Her 
property taxes are $3,285. She's fortunate she owns her home, but she 
has property taxes that come to about $273 a month on average. Her 
phone and cable bill, combined, comes to $140 a month. She has to have 
help doing her snow shoveling, mowing her grass, and other errands 
around the house. That comes to about $50 a month. Finally, her gas she 
has estimated--she doesn't do as much traveling as she used to--is 
about $40 a month.
  That grand total is $1,165. That means she is underwater. She is in 
the red by $64 a month. That is before other expenses.
  Now, she is fortunate that she doesn't have a mortgage anymore. But 
could you imagine if you had a mortgage and on top of that $1,165 you 
added another $600, $800, $1,000, $1,200 a month.
  She has her car paid for, but it's from the nineties. That car, if it 
was a payment, would be $200 or $300 a month. Add that on top. She was 
just telling me about repairs. She spent $1,700 fixing her furnace at 
her home. That's not calculated in all of her other monthly expenses, 
car repairs, et cetera.
  The bottom line is that that $1,101 a month, which is essentially 
what she lives on--and one in three seniors live on that Social 
Security payment a month. You cannot afford to lose, at her age range, 
over $100 a month. At $100 a month, that means she's either cutting 
back on her food, cutting back on her medicine, turning the thermostat 
down in winter or up in the summer. But it has real-life implications 
on people who can afford it the least, people like my 84-year-old 
mother and millions of seniors across this country.
  There are some in this body who try to rewrite history. They are 
trying to say that our economic woes, our deficit, is somehow caused by 
Social Security. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Social 
Security, by law, cannot contribute one dime to our deficit.
  Are there long-term issues with Social Security? Well, long-term we 
do have to make sure that we're making sure that those funds are 
available in the future, but there are other ways we can do that. But 
the chained CPI merely extends the Social Security program for 2 years. 
Those real cuts to every single senior that receives those payments are 
real dollars that people will lose.
  I respect the President's desire to achieve a comprehensive and 
bipartisan budget proposal. I'm one of the freshmen in this building. I 
came from a State legislature. When we did a State budget--and I used 
to be the cochair of that committee--we spent 8 hours a day, 3 days a 
week for 3 or 4 months crafting a budget. And every single line of that 
budget meant something. It was a statement of your values. It's a moral 
statement of your values as a government.
  This government hasn't had a budget to work off of for a number of 
years. We just can't seem to get people on both sides of the aisle in 
both houses to be able to sit down and have a document that guides the 
country.
  So the President, in an effort to do that, said, I heard the 
discussions we've had on the fiscal cliff, on the debt ceiling, on the 
sequester. He's listened to the people on the other side of the aisle. 
And one of the things that's been asked for by the Speaker of this 
Chamber and the others is the chained CPI, a cut in Social Security 
benefits. So the President included it in his budget in order to try to 
bring them to the table.
  Now, I sat through the Budget Committee today, which I serve on here 
in the House. I can tell you, it was not bringing people to the table. 
With no surprise, it just brought criticism from the Republicans on the 
President's budget in general.
  So I think the President does not need to keep the chained CPI in his 
budget proposal. It is a break, I believe, to the promise we've made to 
seniors about what they will see from us. In fact, 107 people in this 
House, Democrats in this House, including myself, have signed a letter 
to the President explicitly stating that we don't want to see any cuts 
to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
  If I can, let me just read a little bit of this letter to you that 
was signed by a majority of the House Democrats back in February.

                              {time}  1540

       We thank the President for standing strong and the American 
     Taxpayer Relief Act to protect Social Security, Medicare and 
     Medicaid from benefit cuts that would jeopardize the well-
     being of millions of Americans.
       We write to affirm our vigorous opposition to cutting 
     Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits in any final 
     bill to replace sequester. Earned Social Security and 
     Medicare benefits provide the financial and health 
     protections necessary to keep individuals and families out of 
     poverty. Medicaid is not only a lifeline for low-income 
     children, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and 
     families, it is the primary source of income of long-term 
     care services and supports for 3.6 million individuals.
       We cannot overstate their importance for our constituents 
     and our country. That is why we remain deeply opposed to 
     proposals to reduce Social Security benefits through use of 
     the Chained CPI to calculate cost-of-living adjustments. We 
     remain committed to making the changes that will extend 
     solvency for 75 years, but Social Security has not 
     contributed to our current fiscal problems, and it should not 
     be on the bargaining table.

  Then it goes on to discuss Medicare and Medicaid.
  We have been very explicit that there are other ways that we can 
extend the solvency of Social Security. Remember, it did not cause the 
financial situation this country is in right now. That was an economic 
uncertainty caused by the financial institutions and the housing crisis 
that put every State in this country into fiscal chaos, but that was 
not caused one dime by Social Security. So for us to balance the budget 
on the backs of seniors and the disabled, of veterans and the children 
who receive Social Security doesn't make sense.
  Now, there is something that does make sense. Currently, we take a 
portion out of every person's check to pay for Social Security. It is 
your earned benefit. You pay in in every paycheck to Social Security so 
that, when you need it, it is available for you whether it be at 
retirement or through disability. At $113,700, you are capped when you 
make that much income. Not $1 more in income do you pay additional 
dollars into Social Security. If we lift that cap and, like so many 
other provisions, you continue to pay taxes on your salary--so, if you 
make $500,000, you don't just stop at $113,700 and paying into Social 
Security, but you would continue to pay into Social Security like you 
do on all your other taxes--that would extend the solvency of Social 
Security for at least 75 years.
  Now, that is a commonsense way for us to make sure a program that is 
probably one of the most popular and crucial programs the Federal 
Government offers to its citizens that we've all paid into--our money, 
our social contract, our insurance so when we need it we have it--can 
be extended simply by lifting that cap, and that would go a long way to 
providing the economic certainty that we need.
  So while we are supportive of so many of the measures that the 
President has in his budget, the President's budget focuses on what we 
need to, which is the immediate need to make sure that we are improving 
the economy and that we are creating jobs. That is our focus that we 
need to do in this country.
  In fact, the Congressional Budget Office, which is our nonpartisan 
agency that we work with--that both Republicans and Democrats work with 
to get the financial numbers that we work with in our bills and to make 
all the decisions we make--has said that three-quarters of this 
Nation's deficit in the next year that we're all talking about a budget 
for, 2014, is caused by economic weakness--in other words, unemployment 
and underemployment. If we address those two issues, that is

[[Page H1941]]

the best way to stop the trajectory with the deficit and the debt. By 
getting people back to work, you can do that.
  I'll tell you, in this budget, the President does much of that. The 
President includes extra funding for research and development. It's 
what we have been told by businesses is the best thing we can do to be 
competitive in a global market. It includes $50 billion for 
infrastructure investment--to get people working now, to have us help 
stimulate the economy.
  I can tell you, when we had the last recovery dollars that happened 
at the very start of the recovery that we had with this bad economy--
when we were at our worst and our lowest point--we were bleeding 
hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. When those recovery dollars came 
to the States and my committee, the Joint Committee on Finance, we had 
to approve every single dollar that went to roads and schools and other 
programs. We had our road-building industry and our vertical 
construction industry in our State tell us that 54,000 jobs were saved 
or created because of those dollars.
  In the Budget Committee, I asked the question of Dr. Elmendorf from 
the Congressional Budget Office nationally, what did that do for us, 
those recovery dollars. They estimated--not the Democrats, not the 
Republicans, not anyone else but our official agency--up to 3.3 million 
jobs were saved or created because of those recovery dollars.

  The President has $50 billion in infrastructure to make sure that 
people are working again, and he's getting them back out, while we need 
to, to keep the economy moving. He has focused on advanced 
manufacturing: some innovative ideas that we could create these hubs 
where people can create new jobs and have jobs come back to America 
from overseas. He also provides tax credits for small business owners 
who will hire new workers so that we can, again, continue to have the 
private sector, as well as what we can provide through infrastructure, 
to help get the economy to grow and to create the jobs we need to.
  Those are all good provisions the President has. At the same time, he 
is working at $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, which, on top of the 
previous $2.5 trillion, takes us exactly to the target people have been 
talking about of the $4 trillion deficit we need to address in the 
immediate amount of time. It has the long-term picture in mind as well. 
It's not saying the Holy Grail is the deficit reduction, but the Holy 
Grail is the economy and job creation to solve our deficit problems, 
and the budget does that.
  There are many strong provisions in the President's budget, but many 
in this House--107 people who signed a letter in this House on the 
Democratic side and many of us in the Progressive Caucus--have been 
especially outspoken about the one provision that we think takes a 
completely wrong turn. That completely wrong turn is the Chained CPI--
to change how we deal with increases for Social Security, how we 
estimate the payments for Social Security--which essentially turns out 
to be a cut, a real dollar cut, to people on Social Security. I can 
tell you they have given us some really better ways to illustratively 
explain what those cuts mean.
  If you take the cuts under Chained CPI and if you are 65 years old, 
that cut will be about 2 weeks' worth of groceries. When you're at 70, 
it's about 6 weeks' worth of groceries, and it continues to grow. At 
75, 9 weeks of groceries; at 80, 13 weeks of groceries. That's a 
quarter of the year that you have less for groceries that you need to 
get by. At 85, people like my mother, 16 weeks of groceries, and if you 
make it to 90 and 95, 20 and 23 weeks of groceries. That's the cut in 
real terms that comes from Chained CPI.
  We stand to make sure that we are raising the issue that as we 
continue to talk about the budget--and we need to go to conference 
committee. We have a House budget; we have a Senate budget; and we have 
the President's budget. But do you know what that means? We have no 
budget. That means we will continue to have continuing resolutions, 
that we will continue to fight every 2 or 3 months and do stopgap 
measures with chewing gum and Band-Aids unless we have a budget.
  So I appreciate what the President did. He's giving us a measure 
specifically to make us all come to the table to try to do this. His 
intention was to take a Republican idea, Chained CPI, and put it in his 
proposal to show he's willing to compromise. Unfortunately, all we've 
heard from the Republicans has been criticism of the budget.
  In the House, their budget is a fantasy as far as balancing the 
budget in 10 years as they claim. It is a fantasy because it repeals 
the Affordable Care Act, benefits of which include making sure that 
people with preexisting conditions have health care, making sure that 
children up to 26 have health care, making sure that we have dollars 
for preventative care. It repeals the benefits, but it keeps the 
savings and the revenue. Well, you can't do that. We can't tax the 
people in the Affordable Care Act so that we can pay for the benefits 
but not give them and keep that money and try to balance the budget. So 
it's not a real budget.
  What we need to do is have a real budget, and we need to get people 
to the table. I urge this House to announce conferees so we can start 
the hard work of doing that. The three positions are on the table. We 
need to do that.
  We want to say strongly--the Progressive Caucus and 107 Democrats in 
this body--that the one thing that is unacceptable is to balance that 
budget on the backs of people who didn't create the crisis, and they 
are our seniors, the disabled, our veterans, and our children and 
orphans who rely on Social Security; and the Chained CPI would provide 
just that sort of a cut to those people.

                              {time}  1550

  So, Mr. Speaker, those are some of the strongest problems that we 
have with the change in the Consumer Price Index. That is called 
chained CPI. There are a number of organizations, Mr. Speaker, that 
have joined us in this. They range from the AFL-CIO, on behalf of the 
working people of this country, to PCCC, to MoveOn, and a number of 
other national organizations that have stood with us at multiple press 
conferences this week to try to raise awareness that this is a bad 
idea.
  This is taking the budget situation we have in the future and 
balancing it today on those who can least afford it. We need to have 
the backs of our seniors and our disabled, not put the budget on their 
backs. And the chained CPI is a provision that, unfortunately, does 
just that.
  So while it is not the President's idea, it is absolutely not the 
Democrats' idea. It was an idea proposed by the Republican Speaker and 
other Republicans just in the last couple of years. It was put forward 
in the President's budget to try to bring people to the table. We want 
to make sure that it is heard loud and clear that many of us will not 
support a bill that includes a chained CPI. It will not get the support 
of many people in this room if it includes those cuts to our country's 
promise, which is to our seniors.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a huge concern to those of us in the Progressive 
Caucus. There are a number of groups, including Strength in Social 
Security, who join us in our efforts against this, who've put out some 
various estimations of what this means. They have said that for someone 
who is 75 years old, the cut they would see would be about $658, which 
is 3.7 percent of what they are currently receiving in Social Security.
  If you're 85, they estimate that to be $1,147 a year, 6.5 percent. 
Again, to my mother, who's getting that $1,101, that is almost a $100 a 
month cut. As I estimated from her utilities to her groceries to her 
other payments that she has, none of those are necessarily luxuries at 
85. None of those are excessive payments. They are the basic payments 
just to get by that she comes up with, for about $1,165 a month. After 
burning through savings for 20 years, she just doesn't have it left.
  So like a third of Americans who live on that Social Security check, 
they live on $1,101. They live on that $13,212 a year. And I don't 
think there is anyone who could honestly say that that's too much. 
After you've paid in your entire life, it's your earned benefit that 
you paid into, that insurance for when you need it, for when you are a 
senior and you retire, or when you become disabled, or God forbid your 
parents die and now you're an orphan, that payment is this country's 
promise to each

[[Page H1942]]

and every one of those people. So to go after that $13,000 payment to 
this 84-year-old person and get that 6.5 percent cut, that means real 
things.
  I remember a few years back, before, in Wisconsin, we created about a 
decade ago a program called SeniorCare to help seniors afford 
prescription drugs. It has been a great success with bipartisan 
support. But prior to that, my mother was one of those people who cut 
pills in half because she couldn't afford her medications. She doesn't 
have to do that anymore because of SeniorCare, but we're the only 
State, Wisconsin, which has SeniorCare in the entire country. There are 
seniors in the other 49 States who, if they get that cut, that means 
cutting pills in half, that means deciding which pills you're taking, 
and it means deciding which meal you're not eating. It means those sort 
of basic, basic cuts.
  It is estimated that at 95 years old, according to Strength in Social 
Security, it's a $1,622 cut. That is a 9.2 percent cut. We're balancing 
the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it who didn't 
create the financial times we're in, and that seems entirely wrong.

  What that means in a lifetime, what your cumulative benefit loss is, 
and that is where it really starts to add up, and maybe this will be 
more illustrative:
  At 75, at that point on Social Security, you've lost $4,631.
  At 80, you've lost $8,660.
  At 85, people like my mother, she has lost $13,910 of what she has 
paid into and expected to get during her twilight years. That's the 
enormity of these cuts.
  I have been joined by an extremely articulate and solid progressive 
colleague of mine, a mentor of mine, someone who is not only a strong 
leader, not only in this entire House, but especially during this hour 
with the Progressive Caucus, and I yield to the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee).
  Ms. LEE of California. First, let me thank the gentleman for yielding 
and for your kind words, and also for your tremendous leadership and 
for really coordinating the message hour of the week, not only on 
behalf of the Progressive Caucus, but for this entire body and for the 
American people. It is so important that the truth be told and that we 
continue to beat the drum to protect the priorities of all of the 
American people, not just the few. So thank you very much.
  We are here today to talk about the budget and its priorities, and 
also some of the issues that are very troubling, which I'll mention in 
just a minute.
  I'm pleased, though, to see that the President's budget clearly 
understands the need to create jobs and to grow our economy. This 
budget makes critical investments in early childhood education and 
brings down the cost of higher education. The budget protects vital 
nutrition programs like SNAP and WIC. This budget permanently extends 
vital expansion of the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, 
which has lifted about 1.6 million Americans out of poverty in 2010 
alone.
  In stark contrast, our Republican colleagues proposed yet another $6 
trillion tax cut for the wealthiest, while focusing a majority of their 
draconian budget cuts on shredding our Nation's safety net.
  Every Member of Congress may claim to support the goal of cutting 
poverty in America, but gutting programs that families rely on to put 
food on their tables is simply not how we achieve that goal. Now, as I 
said, I was very pleased to see some of the innovative and 
groundbreaking proposals that the President included in his budget.
  However, I have to join Mr. Pocan in our strong opposition to the 
inclusion of the so-called chained CPI in the budget. As many of us 
have said, chained CPI is a benefit cut, which it is, to Social 
Security, and I wholeheartedly oppose it.
  So thank you again for beating that drum today on this because this 
is not the President's ideal deficit reduction plan. We should not be 
bargaining for Republican goodwill with policies that hurt our seniors. 
Social Security was established more than 77 years ago, providing 
economic security to generations of Americans who have made 
contributions over their lifetime. They worked for this.
  Changing the cost of living adjustment now will disproportionately 
hurt seniors who rely on every single dollar of support as income. The 
chained CPI would cut one full month's income from a 92-year-old 
beneficiary's annual Social Security benefits. Seniors cannot afford 
that. The chained CPI will also cut living standards, and most deeply 
for the poorest households, which tend to rely on Social Security for 
all or most of their income.
  The fact of the matter is Social Security should not even be a part 
of this discussion. It should not be a part of this budget. The program 
has accumulated assets of $2.7 trillion and does not contribute to the 
Federal budget deficit. Voters across the political spectrum oppose 
cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, and we must 
do whatever it takes to protect these vital benefits from cuts.
  Democrats believe that the best way to reduce our deficit and make 
our economy grow is to create jobs. That's why I join my CPC colleagues 
in rejecting any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social 
Security benefits, including raising the retirement age or cutting the 
cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and that they 
need.
  We also know there are commonsense reforms that would reduce health 
care costs and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars without 
cutting benefits. If Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, 
we really can make additional savings, and they should come from those 
who can most afford it. We can save over $110 billion just by 
eliminating wasteful subsidies to oil companies who have already made 
record profits. We can close corporate tax loopholes--that would save 
billions of dollars to invest in education--and we can end wasteful 
Pentagon weapons programs and focus our military on addressing 21st 
century threats.
  So there are many ways that we can accomplish this. Instead of 
supporting policies that harm seniors, let's get back to the real 
problems facing our country, and that's creating 21st century jobs and 
growing our economy for all.
  So thank you again for your leadership. This has been a tremendous 
hour that you have put together, and I hope that the American people 
are listening today. So much is at stake.

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. POCAN. Thank you so much, Ms. Lee. We really appreciate it. And 
again, your history in this House has been recognized by so many of us 
who are new and proud to be here. We appreciate all that you've done on 
behalf of the middle class and those who are striving to be in the 
middle class and those who are just getting by in this country.
  Ms. Lee is also leading an initiative for the Democrats to address 
poverty. We are doing everything we can on the Democratic side, but 
it's under your leadership that's happening, and thank you so much for 
that.
  We've been joined by another colleague who is from California who has 
been another one of our freshman Members of the House, and he is here 
to talk to us also about the issues before us on chained CPI and 
perhaps some other issues. I'd like to introduce, from the State of 
California, Mr. Mark Takano.
  Mr. TAKANO. Thank you. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin. I will 
be speaking today on equal pay. Today I signed the discharge petition 
to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor to ensure that women 
across the country receive equal pay for equal work.
  This week, on Tuesday, we recognized Equal Pay Day, which is the 
symbolic day that marks the time it takes for women's earnings to equal 
men's earnings from the previous year. Thanks to the 23 percent wage 
gap, it takes an extra 3 months for women in America to catch up. The 
wage gap persists at all levels of education and exists across 
occupations.
  In my home State of California, the typical woman, working full-time, 
year-round, is paid, on average, only 84 cents to every dollar her male 
counterparts make. In my home district the pay discrepancy is even 
worse. Women living in the Inland Empire make 81 cents to every dollar, 
and many are the sole breadwinners in their households. This isn't just 
an insult to women who work hard at their jobs every day, it hurts 
families and children.

[[Page H1943]]

  In my district, the wage gap amounts to an average loss of $8,900 
that could be used to pay for rent, groceries, and child care. This is 
unacceptable.
  When President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, he 
criticized the unconscionable practice of paying female employees less 
wages than male employees for the same job. Fifty years later, this 
unconscionable practice is alive and well, which is why we have a duty 
to our mothers, sisters, and daughters to pass the Paycheck Fairness 
Act in this Congress.
  Mr. POCAN. Mr. Takano, would you yield to a question?
  Mr. TAKANO. Yes, sir.
  Mr. POCAN. Mark, I just want to ask you, you've been a leader in this 
body on chained CPI.
  Mr. TAKANO. Yes.
  Mr. POCAN. We did several press conferences this week. You're the 
author of a major letter from many people in this House about it.
  Could you just address a little bit about why you're so passionate 
about the need to make sure we have Social Security for generations in 
the future and why you oppose the chained CPI.
  Mr. TAKANO. Well, I believe chained CPI is bad for veterans and it's 
bad for our seniors, but let me focus on the seniors for a moment.
  The chained CPI, explained in a very simple way, is a way that the 
government would ostensibly index Social Security COLAS, cost-of-living 
increases. Said very simply, under chained CPI, seniors would be paid 
less over time.
  The assumption is that seniors would be able to substitute less 
costly items for the current items they might currently buy. But, you 
know, seniors really use health care a lot more than the rest of us, 
and that's the largest burden that they're facing, trying to pay for 
their health care costs, prescription drugs.
  I think it's a false premise to say that seniors will be able to find 
less costly substitutions. More and more of their income would be going 
to that.
  I believe that many people call Social Security, Medicare, 
entitlements. I call them sacred promises that we made to our seniors. 
I don't believe that we should break those promises. We must keep those 
promises.
  People have earned these benefits over a lifetime. They planned their 
lives around them, and we simply can't go back on what we've promised 
our parents and grandparents.
  Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Takano, again, for you 
leadership on this issue. As I said, you've authored one of the major 
letters that's out there talking about chained CPI and cuts to Social 
Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
  And also, as a member of the Veterans Committee, I know you've been 
especially articulate on the effects on veterans. I thank you for your 
time.
  Mr. TAKANO. Thank you, sir.
  Mr. POCAN. As Representative Takano said, these are sacred promises 
to people who've paid into the program, and now the expectation is, as 
with any insurance, you've paid in and now you're able to get the 
benefit when you need it. That's why you've paid in all your life.
  And that benefit is for people who retire and for people who become 
disabled and, God forbid, children who become orphans. It allows them 
to be able to continue, in our society, to get by.
  But as I've shown, an 84-year old woman like my mother--this is my 
mother's actual story--gets $1,101 a month. That's $13,212 a year. We 
went through her expenses, from utilities, $130 a month, food and other 
miscellaneous items she has to buy, $180 a month.
  Health care, as Representative Takano said, it's about 20 to 30 
percent of the average senior's monthly expense or their income. I'll 
take it right in the middle, 25 percent; that's $275 a month.
  Her car and house insurance, $77 a month, her taxes, $273 a month, 
her phone and cable, $140 a month, miscellaneous, having people mow her 
grass and shovel, et cetera, $50 a month, and her gas about $40 a 
month.
  That's $64 a month more than she makes. And unfortunately, she has, 
at the age of 84, having been widowed since 1991, expended through 
almost all of her savings and, like a third of seniors, is living on 
that Social Security paycheck.
  But what about the senior who's in the exact same situation, 
receiving and living off that check, but they still pay rent or have a 
mortgage? Six hundred to $1,200 more dollars you're going to have to 
add on to that.
  And what if they have a car or they have a bus pass? Two to $300 a 
month you're going to add on to that.
  Miscellaneous repairs. My mother, this year, had to replace her 
heater, at $1,700. How do you do that with a cut in Social Security?
  So additional expenses, still, on the low end, add that up, you're 
almost at $2,000 a month. There's no way that $100 hit that'll happen 
is something that the average senior or person with disabilities, 
veteran, or child can be able to get by. That is a real life cut, and 
where they have to cut and make tough decisions is on their groceries, 
on their medicine, on whether or not they're going to be able to drive 
the car that they have. It's serious consequences.
  And I know that the Democrats have been especially strong in the 
Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus penned a letter that 107 
Democrats in this House have signed on to that said, do not do any cuts 
to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
  Now, there are some who say that you can't ignore it, that in the 
future, far down the road, decades in the future, we have to make sure 
that these programs, these earned benefits are still alive. But we have 
argued there are ways to do that.
  If you lift the cap at which you pay into Social Security, you could 
extend it, the program, Social Security for 75 years into the future. 
And remember, Social Security has not added one dime to the deficit. By 
law, it can't add one dime to the deficit.
  But, instead, we are balancing the budget, with this provision, on 
the backs of the very people who can least afford it.
  So the senior who makes $1,101 is going to see a cut, but the company 
that sends jobs overseas under the Republican budget still gets a tax 
break for sending jobs overseas. And that CEO with the corporate jet 
still gets a tax break under the Republican budget.
  And when you go down the list of breaks that are out there for the 
most wealthy, we need to find a different way to do this than balancing 
the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it, those who've 
paid in their entire lives, those who didn't create the financial 
situation we're in.
  Our Progressive Caucus has been strong in talking about this. We have 
tried to take quite a bit of time today to really explain this as 
plainly as we can and as absolute simply as we can a person's monthly 
budget.

                              {time}  1610

  We all know you have other surprise expenses like your heater goes 
out at your home or your car needs repair. We don't even factor that 
in. Most people will probably still have some rent or perhaps a house 
payment to make. When you add all this in and if you have expended your 
savings like one-third of our seniors who live on that Social Security 
check, it is impossible to continue to get by. And to take a cut to the 
very people who can least afford it seems wrong.
  We are honored in our Progressive Caucus to have two people that lead 
us, Representative Raul Grijalva and Representative Keith Ellison. 
Representative Keith Ellison is a fellow Midwesterner and I think a man 
of incredible common sense, coming from the Midwest, like we like to at 
least think we do back in the Midwest, coming here. And he has done an 
extraordinary job of leading the progressives and the Democrats in this 
House to make sure that we stand up for our seniors and our disabled 
and our veterans and the children who receive Social Security. I would 
like to yield to the chairman of the Progressive Caucus, the gentleman 
from Minnesota, Mr. Keith Ellison.
  Mr. ELLISON. Congressman Pocan, thank you. Thanks for holding down 
this very important Progressive Caucus progressive message. The fact is 
that the Progressive Caucus and the Democrats generally are about 
protecting seniors. That's who we are. That's our brand. That's our 
identity. Social Security came out of the Roosevelt administration, 
came out of core Democratic values. That's what we stand for, that's 
what we believe in,

[[Page H1944]]

and that's why we are standing opposed to the chained CPI. We're not 
going to relent. We've been fighting this thing for months. We're not 
going to give up the fight. We're going to keep on pressing until this 
thing is settled.
  The reality is that this chained CPI takes place within the general 
debate on budget, a general debate on fiscal items. And I happen to 
know that the chained CPI is an idea that emerged from Republican 
leaders only a few months ago. That's who came up with this. And so now 
the President has offered a budget in which he says, Okay, we're going 
to try to compromise from the beginning. We're going to try to take 
some compromise ideas and put them in here, along with some other good 
ideas like early childhood education, like investing in infrastructure 
and jobs. Those things are okay. But I think it was a mistake to ever 
include anything about Social Security in a budget because the Social 
Security does not contribute to the deficit. And so if you want to deal 
with lifting the sequester, deal with something that has to do with 
taxes or spending. If you want to deal with the budget, deal with 
something that adds to or takes away from the budget. If you want to 
deal with deficit reduction, deal with something that has to do with 
that. But don't drag in something that is actually irrelevant.
  The fact is that Social Security is one of the oldest, best programs 
that this country has ever seen and it has taken care, literally, of 
millions of people. It's not an entitlement. It's an earned benefit 
program. It is social insurance people pay into. They earn it and then 
they pay into it. And then they expect it at the end years of their 
lives. Congressman Pocan, I think it's important just to point out that 
a full third of widowed women on Social Security rely entirely on 
Social Security.
  Some people like to say chained CPI is not that big of a cut. Well, 
it depends on how much money you have, doesn't it? It depends on what 
you start with. If you're getting by on $13,000 a year, or under 
$20,000 a year, $250 may seem like a lot of money. My own experience as 
a Member of Congress is that people would ask me at community meetings 
all the time, Are we going to get our COLA check? Are we going to get 
that $250? Why? Because that's a lot of money to folks who are really 
trying to get by.
  And so what I'm saying is let's embrace our core Democratic values. 
Let's look after our seniors. Let's take care of this great program, 
Social Security, that has done so much for so many for so long. And 
let's reject this idea of chained CPI, and let's stand together and say 
chained CPI is not a good idea. It's not something we should offer as a 
bargaining chip for a grand bargain. Let's just take it off the table.
  I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Ellison.
  As a leader of the Progressive Caucus, I have been talking about how 
107 Democrats in this House and the leadership of the Congressional 
Progressive Caucus have signed a letter and asked the President to not 
cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. So the majority of the 
Democrats have already signed a letter saying, Keep the hands off. As 
we deal with our Nation's budget, the one place we shouldn't go is to 
those who need it the most--our seniors, our disabled, our veterans, 
and their children and orphans who receive Social Security benefits.

  As I talked about the realities of that $1,001 a month, as Mr. 
Ellison just said, when you receive that additional $100 cut, that 
additional $100 cut is almost 10 percent of your budget. Think about if 
you had a 10 percent cut in your budget and you're not able to make any 
more money. At 84, I'm sorry, my mom is not going back to Taco Bell. 
She worked there in her seventies to continue to make money because she 
just didn't have it and to have something to continue to get by on. But 
at 84 she's already had a couple of falls. There's nothing else she can 
do to make additional money. So she has to make that tough cut. And I 
would argue that this bad idea that the Republicans came up with and 
the President included just to get them to the table to talk about the 
budget, this bad Republican idea, chained CPI, will have a real effect 
on tens of millions of people across this country. There are way too 
many seniors for whom this means just about everything in their lives.
  She can't really cut her utilities. She can change the thermostat. 
She can set it to 60 in the winter. She cannot use any kind of air 
conditioning in summer. In Wisconsin, I won't recommend that in the 
summer. We have some humid, humid days. So you can't cut this line. Her 
groceries and other things she has to buy for the home, she can cut 
back. But she already tells me stories. There's a place in her 
neighborhood she'll go to that has a $1 burger special. She'll go 
there. This is going back over the holidays. We had to convince her to 
tip 35 cents. Because she said, My God, that's 35 percent. I don't tip 
35 percent. But we're trying to explain to her in the economics of it, 
it's 35 cents to give. But she gets a burger for $1. And she says, 
Sometimes I get two. So she's deciding about a $2 meal. Are we going to 
take that away from someone, the very groceries they live on?
  Health care: with rising health care costs, the facts are that 20 to 
30 percent--I think specifically 26 percent is the current number--of 
your annual costs, seniors' health care costs. She can't change that 
line. Insurance: Does she not insure her vehicle? Does she not insure 
her home in case of a fire? That's $77 a month. We all know you can't 
get away and not pay your taxes. That line is off the table.
  I'm going to jump down a line to her miscellaneous. She has to have 
people shovel and do other things around the home. That's very hard to 
change. That's only a $50 item. Finally, gas: she doesn't control the 
price of gas. So the only line she really has left is her telephone and 
her cable bill.
  And with the way we have to deal with the budget, rather than making 
those who can most afford it in the country and all the tax loopholes 
and tax breaks for some of the wealthiest in this country, instead 
we're going to go to this 84-year-old woman and say you can no longer 
have a telephone to talk to your family and friends on, or lose the 
little bit of entertainment you have through a television seems wrong. 
It's not the values of this country. It's certainly not the values of 
the Democrats in this House. Yet that's what they'll face with a 
chained CPI cut. That's the bottom line. And when those other expenses 
come up, how does a senior pay for them?
  So we really want to express to the President in the strongest 
possible terms that the Republicans may have had this bad idea of 
chained CPI to provide a cut to Social Security payments, but you 
included it in your budget to bring them to the table to make them 
negotiate, and all you've heard for the last 36 hours is criticism and 
that they won't sit at the table. You've got dollars in the budget to 
help grow the economy. The Progressive Caucus had a Back to Work 
Budget. We worked hard and steadfast in talking about growing the 
economy as our best way to solve the deficit and our economic problems. 
But if the Republicans are going to criticize that and refuse to have 
one more dime in revenue, not one more CEO can't still get his tax 
break for that corporate jet, not one more company can't get that tax 
break for sending jobs overseas--those are the types of tax breaks we 
have in this country.
  And if we can't get one more dime from programs like that so that a 
senior doesn't have to make those tough, real-life decisions, then 
we're failing as a government and we are breaking our promise to the 
seniors of this country.

                              {time}  1620

  So I would hope that we can continue to get people who are watching 
this to realize it may be called chained CPI, it may have an obscure 
term--we're the body that came up with a sequester, right? It's a term. 
It's in the dictionary. But I guarantee not one person that I know of 
has ever used it in real life. No one has said to their child: I'm 
going to sequester your toys today. It's just not something that real 
people do. Well, chained CPI is the same thing. It may be an obscure 
economic term, but the bottom line, the reality of what it means to the 
average person who's listening, is it means a cut to those who can 
least afford it, to those third of seniors who live on that check 
exclusively to get by. And all the other seniors who rely largely on 
that to get by, should they have the good fortune to grow old, they'll 
have the bad fortune of seeing that savings go down, as they have these 
expenditures.

[[Page H1945]]

  In the end, we have made a promise--a sacred promise, as 
Representative Takano said--to the people of this country that as we 
take their money, their Social Security, through their earned benefit 
they have paid into--we have put up a social insurance program to 
ensure that when they retire or become disabled or, God forbid, lose 
their parents and become an orphan, they will continue to have an 
ability to live in this country. It's not those people that created our 
financial woes that this country has. There are real ways to deal with 
the deficit. There are real ways to deal with Social Security. But 
those real ways are not the ways that are proposed through the chained 
CPI.
  In fact, another thing that was said, I believe it was by Ms. Lee 
from California, was she talked about, on this floor, we have other 
people trying to fix Social Security. We had 104 Members of the other 
side of the aisle vote for a version of the budget that raised the 
Social Security retirement age to 70. I'll tell you, I don't know many 
construction workers or nurses or teachers who could necessarily still 
be able to do that job as well as they would like to between 67 and 70. 
The construction field, there is not the ability to do that job. As a 
nurse, when you have to lift bodies and help move people, you just 
can't do that job for those additional years. So, to me, to raise the 
Social Security retirement age is, again, part of breaking that 
promise.
  There is a way we can continue the promise, and that is to lift the 
cap on Social Security. Right now, no matter how much you make, we tax 
for Social Security up to $113,700; but as soon as you make a dollar 
more, you don't get taxed for Social Security. Now, we tax in every 
other way in a progressive way, as you make more, you pay more in 
taxes, but we don't tax a dime more at $113,700. If we were simply to 
lift that cap or raise that amount, you would extend Social Security 
for decades. In fact, if you lift the cap entirely, it is estimated at 
least 75 years of life would go into the Social Security program. 
Wouldn't that make a lot more sense than instead nickel-and-diming 
those who can least afford to, to preserve the program?
  So that is the hope of this Progressive Caucus that we have. You've 
heard from a number of leaders, both freshmen and people who have been 
here for a long time. You've heard from people from different parts of 
the country. It is an important promise that we have to the public.
  We are the party that has been there to protect seniors. The fact 
that the President has it included in his budget, we all know--and the 
President has been very clear--it is not his idea. This was an idea 
from the Republican Speaker and other Republicans, and he put it in his 
budget proposal to try to get them to come and finally have a budget 
for this country, to make them come to the table.
  Right now, we have very different documents. We have the Democratic 
document in the Senate and the President's document that invests in the 
economy so we can create jobs and grow the economy right now. And we 
have a Republican version of the budget that focuses almost exclusively 
on getting rid of the deficit. The holy grail is the deficit; it will 
cost us millions of jobs. Just in the next year it is estimated 2 
million jobs will be lost. But you can't have those diverse documents 
and still fund Congress. So what does Congress do? We continue to have 
continuing resolutions that get us by for months at a time.
  I have heard on this floor so many times where people will talk about 
a wasteful program--and there are wasteful programs in the Federal 
Government we should address. There is a GAO report that specifically 
outlines about 45 areas of duplication, where we are doing the same 
thing across different agencies. We have a focus on the Oversight and 
Government Reform Committee to find waste, fraud, and abuse wherever we 
can. We are working on that. The problem is when you don't have a 
budget that says we're going to cut these programs so we can fund these 
programs, we punt. And as a government, we have punted far too many 
times. We have not had a serious budget in place.

  So the President's goal is indeed sincere, that he wants people to 
come to the table. I, perhaps, would have waited to compromise until we 
got to the table, but the President in this case put their request 
right in his budget and put it on the table. The problem is, that is a 
bad compromise. There are so many other things that we can do that will 
better serve the public than to cut the benefits from our seniors and 
our veterans and our disabled and the children and orphans who rely on 
Social Security.
  So, Mr. Speaker, our Progressive Caucus has been here for close to 
the last hour to make sure that we are talking about an important 
program that the public, I'm sure, is concerned about. I know I'm 
getting the calls in my office. But we really plead with the President 
to make sure that as we move forward and try to bring the Republicans 
to the table to try to have a national budget--as we all need to--do 
not balance that budget on the backs of those who can least afford it.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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