[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 164 (Monday, November 18, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8084-S8086]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           RETIREMENT CRISIS

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the retirement 
crisis in this country--a crisis that has received far too little 
attention and far too little response from Washington.
  I have spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on 
middle-class families--families who worked hard, who played by the 
rules, but who still found themselves just hanging on by their 
fingernails. Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more 
productive, their wages flattened, while core expenses such as housing 
and health care and sending their kids to college kept going up.
  Working families did not ask for a bailout. Instead, they rolled up 
their sleeves. They sent both parents into the workforce. But that 
meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they 
tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could.
  Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a 
generation

[[Page S8085]]

ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible 
purchases. When that still was not enough to cover rising costs, they 
took on debt--credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the 
necessities.
  As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial 
institutions were all too happy to chain them to financial products 
that got them into even more trouble--products where fine print and 
legalese covered the true costs of credit. These trends are not new. 
There have been warning signs for years about what is happening to our 
middle class.
  One major consequence of these increasing pressures on working 
people--a consequence that receives far too little attention--is that 
the dream of a secure retirement is slowly slipping away.
  A generation ago, middle-class families were able to put away enough 
money during their working years to make it through their later years 
with dignity. On average, they saved about 11 percent of their take-
home pay while working. Many paid off their homes, got rid of all their 
debts, and retired with strong pensions from their employers. And when 
pensions, savings, and investments fell short, they could rely on 
Social Security to make up the difference.
  That was the story a generation ago. Since that time the retirement 
landscape has shifted dramatically against our families. Among working 
families on the verge of retirement, about a third have no retirement 
savings of any kind and another third have total savings that are less 
than a year's annual income. Many seniors have seen their housing 
wealth shrink as well. According to AARP, in 2012, one out of every 
seven older homers was paying down a mortgage that was higher than the 
value of their house.
  And just as they need to rely more than ever on pensions, employers 
are withdrawing from their traditional role in helping provide a secure 
retirement. Two decades ago, more than a third of all private sector 
workers--35 percent--had traditional defined benefit pensions--pensions 
that guaranteed a certain monthly payment that retirees knew they could 
depend on. Today that number has been cut in half. Only 18 percent of 
private sector workers have defined benefit pensions. Employers have 
replaced guaranteed retirement income with savings plans, such as 
401(k) plans, that leave the retiree at the mercy of a market that 
rises and falls and sometimes at the mercy of dangerous investment 
products. These plans often fall short of what retirees need and nearly 
half of all American workers do not even have access to those limited 
plans. This leaves more than 44 million workers without any retirement 
assistance from their employers.
  Add all of this up--the dramatic decline in individual savings and 
the dramatic decline of guaranteed retirement benefits and employer 
support in return for a lifetime of work--and we are left with a 
retirement crisis, a crisis that is as real and as frightening as any 
policy problem facing the United States today.
  With less savings and weaker private retirement protection, retirees 
depend more than ever on the safety and reliability of Social Security. 
Social Security works. No one runs out of benefits and the payments do 
not rise or fall with the stock market. Two-thirds of seniors rely on 
it for the majority of their income in retirement, and for 14 million 
seniors--14 million--this is the safety net that keeps them out of 
poverty. God bless Social Security.
  And yet even Social Security has been under attack. Monthly payments 
are modest, averaging about $1,250, and over time those benefits are 
shrinking in value. This puts a terrible squeeze on seniors.
  With tens of millions of people more financially stressed as they 
approach retirement, with more and more people left out of the private 
retirement security system, and with the economic security of our 
families unraveling, Social Security is rapidly becoming the only--
only--lifeline that millions of seniors have to keep their heads above 
water. And yet instead of taking on the retirement crisis, instead of 
strengthening Social Security, some in Washington are fighting to cut 
benefits.
  Just this morning the Washington Post ran an editorial mocking the 
idea of a looming retirement crisis. To make sure no one missed the 
point, they even put the words ``retirement crisis'' in quotation 
marks.
  No retirement crisis? Tell that to the millions of Americans who are 
facing retirement without a pension. Tell that to the millions of 
Americans who have nothing to fall back on except Social Security. 
There is a $6.6 trillion gap between what Americans under 65 are 
currently saving and what they will need to maintain their standard of 
living when they hit retirement. Mr. President, $6.6 trillion--and that 
assumes that Social Security benefits are not cut. Make no mistake, 
there is a crisis.
  The call to cut Social Security has an uglier side to it too. The 
Washington Post framed the choice as more children in poverty versus 
more seniors in poverty. The suggestion that we have become a country 
where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs 
tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong. This 
is about our values, and our values tell us that we do not build a 
future by deciding first who among the vulnerable will be left to 
starve.
  Look at the basic facts. Today Social Security has a $2.7 trillion 
surplus. If we do nothing, Social Security will be safe for the next 20 
years and even after that will continue to pay most benefits. With some 
modest adjustments, we can keep the system solvent for many more 
years--and we could even increase benefits.
  The tools to help us build a future are available to us now. We do 
not start the debate by deciding who gets kicked to the curb. We are 
Americans. We start the debate by figuring out how to create better 
efficiencies, how to make small changes that will make the system 
fairer, how to grow the pool of those who contribute, and how to 
rebuild the system that every single one of us can rely on to make sure 
there is a baseline in retirement that no one falls below.
  We do not build a future for our children by cutting basic retirement 
benefits for their grandparents. No. We build a future for our kids by 
strengthening our economy, by investing in education and infrastructure 
and research, by rebuilding a strong and robust middle class in which 
every kid gets a chance and the most vulnerable have a strong safety 
net.
  The most recent discussion about cutting benefits has focused on 
something called the chained CPI. Supporters of the chained CPI say it 
is a more accurate way of measuring the cost-of-living increases for 
seniors. That statement is simply not true. Chained CPI falls far short 
of the actual increases in costs that seniors face. Pure and simple, 
chained CPI is just a fancy way to say cut benefits.
  The Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed a measure of the real 
impact of inflation on seniors. It is called the CPI-E. If we adopt it 
today, it would generally increase the benefits for our retirees, not 
cut them. Social Security is not the answer for all of our retirement 
problems. We need to find a way to tackle the financial squeeze that is 
crushing our families. We need to help families start saving again. We 
need to make sure more workers have access to better pensions. But in 
the meantime, so long as those problems continue to exist and as long 
as we are in the midst of a real and growing retirement crisis, a 
crisis that is shaking the foundations of what was once a vibrant and 
secure middle class, the absolute last thing we want to do is cut 
Social Security benefits. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013, 
at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal 
lifeline for millions of our seniors, is allow the program to be 
dismantled inch by inch.
  Over the past generation, working families have been hacked at, 
chipped, and hammered. If we want a real middle class, a middle class 
that continues to serve as the backbone of our country, then we must 
take the retirement crisis seriously. Seniors have worked their entire 
lives and have paid into this system. But right now more people than 
ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire. The 
numbers continue to get worse. That is why we should be talking about 
expanding Social Security benefits, not cutting them.
  Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders 
from Vermont, and others have been

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pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly 
effective. It is incredibly popular. The calls for strengthening it are 
growing louder day by day.
  The conversation about retirement and Social Security benefits is not 
a conversation just about math. At its core this is a conversation 
about our values. It is a conversation about who we are as a country 
and who we are as a people. I believe we honor our promises. We make 
good on a system that millions of people paid into faithfully 
throughout their working years. We support the right of every person to 
retire with dignity.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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