[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 48 (Thursday, April 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1948-H1949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         AGAINST THE CHAINED CPI AND SOCIAL SECURITY REDUCTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. 
Kaptur) for 30 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to speak against any proposed 
reduction in earned Social Security benefits through the so-called 
chained CPI calculation. No issue better focuses the interests of the 
senior citizens of our country versus the top 1 percent greater than 
the debate over Social Security.
  Earlier this year, over my objections, this Congress cut senior meals 
by $823,000 in Ohio--or, roughly, 145,000 meals. Now some here in 
Washington are approaching the jugular for our seniors' Social Security 
benefit cuts.
  The majority of seniors across our land depend on every single dollar 
they get from Social Security to put food on the table, to pay for 
utilities, to pay for housing. So many struggle with that every day. By 
slashing benefits in Social Security, while continuing to give tax 
havens to the richest people in this country, it proves that the 
priorities in Washington lie with the 1 percent, not with those 
Americans who struggle every day.
  The White House has chosen to include the so-called chained CPI 
method for calculating Social Security cost of living adjustments in 
its fiscal proposed 2014 budget, the one that we will be considering.

                              {time}  1700

  But I agree with Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, who said what a chained 
CPI really is is like being in a boat with a chain and a ball around 
your ankle, and they throw you in the water and you start to sink. 
That's exactly what a chained CPI is in Social Security.
  Numerous government programs, including Social Security benefits, and 
income thresholds for tax brackets are indexed for inflation. That's 
what CPI is all about. Every year, seniors wait to see what their 
inflation adjustment will be in Social Security and in Medicare to see 
whether they'll get as much money as they got last year or less. The 
formula change that is being proposed would add up to a big cut for 
America's senior citizens who have earned their benefits.
  Imagine, for example, a person born in 1935 who retired to full 
benefits at age 65 in the year 2000, and they paid into Social Security 
their entire working life. According to the Social Security 
Administration, people in that position under the current formula have 
an average monthly benefit of $1,435, or about $17,220 per year. Under 
the cost-of-living adjustment for 2012, that benefit would rise a bit 
to $1,986 a month this year, or about $23,832 a year. But under the 
chained CPI proposal, that sum would be less. It would be about $1,880 
a month, or $22,560 a year. That's a cut of over 5 percent, or a $106 a 
month cut, and more as you go further and further into future years. In 
other words, it gets worse and worse.
  The other problem is that the people who rely most on their Social 
Security benefits--people who are older, people who have illness--are 
the ones who sadly the chained CPI does the worst job of accommodating. 
In fact, the group that gets the biggest FICA tax hike is families 
making between 30 and $40,000 a year--dead center in our middle class. 
Their increase would be almost six times worse. It would affect them 
six times more than those who are in the millionaire tax bracket. 
That's because millionaires are already in the top tax bracket so 
they're not being pushed by the formula into higher marginal rates 
because of changing bracket thresholds. Isn't that convenient.
  So because senior citizens spend more of their income on health care 
and housing, two areas where the formula is flawed and their true cost 
is under represented, the chained CPI proposal hurts seniors more.
  Beyond the benefit inflation formula, we should not be supporting a 
plan that uses Social Security to pay for deficits it didn't create. 
The Social Security trust fund is sound. Without anything being done, 
it would function well into 2038; and even after that time with no 
changes, we could pay 80 percent of the benefits that people have 
earned. Now, one of the reasons that Social Security looks over a long 
time horizon is because of economic downturns. When people get thrown 
out of work, they're not contributing into the Social Security trust 
fund. The answer to Social Security is to put people back to work. We 
have 12.5 million people unemployed in this country, and that creates a 
temporary blip that would affect people who will retire 20-25 years 
from now. We can fix that problem because Social Security is an 
efficient and effective program, but we shouldn't be using the American 
people's annuity for retirement that they earned and mix it up with the 
regular budget. It's two different things.
  About 98 percent of Social Security benefits go out in the form of 
benefit checks which the beneficiaries spend on whatever they value 
most. Most of them spend the vast majority on food. But less than 2 
percent of Social Security today is put on administrative expenses. The 
program is very efficiently run, and no private pension plan, no 401(k) 
that took so much of the people's money away, no private annuity, can 
claim that kind of efficient operation. Cuts in promised Social 
Security benefits, whether they occur because of the chained CPI, or 
some people here are talking about a higher retirement age or means 
testing, will shift more costs onto already struggling American 
families and our senior citizens. Frankly, I don't support that.
  I applaud that the chained CPI proposal that was in the White House 
budget had a provision to protect the very oldest and disabled persons 
who receive supplemental security income and low-income veterans, but 
let me put on the record: these groups represent less than half of the 
seniors who have earned Social Security benefits. The formula doesn't 
really take care of others who are impacted by this proposed CPI 
change.
  Frankly, this is not the time to cut earned benefits of millions of 
senior Americans who are already struggling financially. And I can 
guarantee you, the lowest-income citizens in this country are women 
over the age of 85, and I would never vote to take a penny away from 
them. This formula should be there in a form that allows them to live 
in dignity.
  We have been unwilling as a Congress to close tax loopholes for the 
billionaires and millionaires of our country. This has been a Congress 
unwilling to prosecute Wall Street bankers for the damage they did, but 
it appears that some are willing to take money from our seniors who 
have earned and worked for Social Security benefits that are critical 
to their livelihoods and which they depend upon.

  You know, I have a story to tell. Last weekend, I was doing grocery 
shopping

[[Page H1949]]

for our family back home, and I saw an older gentleman. I was thinking 
about what I was going to say here in Congress. He was in the 
supermarket and he had his cart, and he was all bent over. He was 
trudging along aisle after aisle, and he had quite a bit of trouble 
even raising his neck to look at what the prices were. He seemed to be 
going around, and I noticed he wasn't putting a whole lot in his cart, 
but he was putting some things in, watching every penny. And when I 
finished with my shopping, I saw him out in the parking lot. I thought, 
Is he going to his car? Where's he going? I watched him push his 
shopping cart, and he had put all of his groceries in two backpacks. I 
saw him pushing his grocery cart across the parking lot way to the 
corner by the sidewalk, and I realized what he was doing: he wasn't 
going to a car--he didn't have a car. What he was doing was, he was 
putting his groceries in these backpacks to put on his back, and then 
in his condition walk to wherever his home or wherever he was residing. 
I looked at that, and I thought, you know, I have to go back to 
Congress and tell that story because that's exactly the kind of person 
that the chained CPI would impact the most.
  These senior citizens shouldn't have to have this Congress debating 
about their benefits because they get scared all across our country. We 
should never do anything that upsets our seniors, who are dealing with 
so many issues in their own lives that each of us someday will have to 
deal with. And I find it sad, really, that this issue of Social 
Security has been included in the budget debates that we are about to 
get into. Social Security is separate. It has its own trust fund. It is 
sound. It has a formula that works. The best thing we can do for future 
generations is to get everybody back to work so that the FICA trust 
fund works 50 years down the road. But right now, we shouldn't be 
worrying our seniors.
  We shouldn't be asking them to take cuts in senior meals. The people 
who go for senior meals are senior citizens who actually need better 
nutrition. I've gone to many senior sites. One image that remains in my 
mind at one site in my own district is a very thin senior woman who is 
probably 85 years old, and the senior center served a small sandwich 
for lunch. They served a little bit of warm corn. There was a little 
pudding, and an apple and a can of milk on the tray, and that woman ate 
everything but half her sandwich, and she took that half of the 
sandwich that she didn't eat and she wrapped it up and put it into her 
worn purse, and she left that senior center and walked home. Those are 
the seniors that we have to see here and care about.
  I'm just glad and I'm very grateful to the citizens of my region that 
they've sent me here, and I urge my colleagues to oppose any Social 
Security cuts for current or future beneficiaries in any deficit 
reduction package, especially that contained in the chained CPI 
proposal. My vote will always be to give our seniors freedom from 
worry, freedom from the chains of the CPI proposal that would pull them 
down if they're thrown overboard.

                              {time}  1710

  The American people would not want to do what is being proposed in 
this chained CPI to the senior citizens of our country if they really 
understood what it means. $100 to a senior in a monthly check is doled 
out penny by penny by penny.
  We have a program in the Department of Agriculture where, in the 
summer months, our seniors can go to some fruit stands around our 
country and they get a little coupon and they can buy fruits and 
vegetables. And the owner of this one fruit stand in Ohio said to me, 
you know, Congresswoman, I never realized, among seniors, how much they 
had to sacrifice. They can't buy things that normal families buy.
  I said, tell me more. And the farmer said, you know, I had a woman in 
here last week who stared and stared at a container of raspberries. And 
the price on the raspberries at that stand was $4. That senior woman 
had not eaten raspberries in 25 years because she couldn't afford them.
  And that farmer said, you know, when I saw her coupons, I told her, 
ma'am, I will cut the price in half. And her total bill came up to, 
like, I think he said it was like $10.96, and he was going to give her 
the four pennies back. And he said, you know what? How about if I give 
you some green beans to put in your sack for the extra 4 cents? And 
that's exactly what happened at that one transaction.
  Multiply that times millions of seniors across this country and get a 
sense of what they face. I can tell you in Ohio, and I'm sure it's the 
same everywhere, the largest increase in the number of people coming 
into our food banks across this country are senior citizens. You can 
say, why is that?
  Well, you know, if they had a bank account, if they were able to save 
a little bit, it doesn't pay anything in interest now, after the crash 
of 2008, so they're not making anything off any savings that they might 
have.
  A lot of them, if their kids are unemployed, they've let them move in 
with them; and so grandma and grandpa are the ones that are holding 
millions of families across this country together until their kids and 
grandkids can get back on their feet again.
  And I think what the seniors are doing, because prices are rising, 
prices haven't gone down, they're going into these food banks and 
they're getting a bag of groceries to help them stretch the meager 
dollars that they have.
  So as we move into this deficit debate and into the budget debate, I 
want my colleagues to think about the citizens that they represent and 
how vital that Social Security check is, and to do nothing to those who 
have not asked for any reduction. They can't afford any reduction.
  There are so many other places in this economy where we can go in 
order to try to balance the budget. We should not do it on the backs of 
our senior citizens.
  So I would say, free our seniors from the CPI. Oppose any proposals 
to change the formula that would cut their benefits. We already tax 
those who have significant assets if they earn over a certain amount on 
Social Security with other income. We don't need to harm the millions 
of Americans who just get by month after month.
  I thank my colleagues for listening.
  I ask the Members of this Congress to oppose the chained CPI and to 
stand with our senior citizens to give them the dignity in their 
retirement years that they have earned.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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