[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 60 (Monday, April 8, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H3123-H3126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       SOCIAL SECURITY IS THE NATION'S PREMIER INSURANCE PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut 
(Mr. Larson) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be on this 
floor and to hear the eloquence of  Jim Clyburn talking about a legend 
in Senator Fritz Hollings.
  Mr. Speaker, it gives us pause this evening, and I am honored to be 
joined by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, a young man who has served 
his Nation with dignity as well, as we talk about something equally 
important and near and dear to Fritz Hollings' heart as it is to all 
America: Social Security.
  We have introduced a bill. On Wednesday at 2 o'clock we will be 
having our fourth hearing on the subject matter of Social Security. We 
are honored to see that that is going forward, because there haven't 
been hearings for some time on the matter of expanding Social Security.
  Under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and now Rich Neal on the Ways 
and Means Committee and a return to regular order, we are focusing on 
the needs of the American people, and nothing is more important than 
Social Security.
  Let me start by underscoring something that should be intuitively 
obvious to everyone, but oftentimes is overlooked: Social Security is 
not an entitlement. Social Security is the insurance that people have 
paid for.
  How do we know this? We know it simply because you only have to look 
as far as your pay stub, whether it is weekly, biweekly, or monthly, 
under the definition of FICA.
  FICA stands for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. Whose? 
Yours.
  Citizens all across this Nation understand that they have contributed 
to this program.

[[Page H3124]]

  I want to give the President of the United States a shout-out here, 
because even under the intense scrutiny of the campaign, when 
challenged by 16 other Republicans, President Trump alone amongst the 
Republicans said: No, this is not an entitlement. This is an earned 
benefit, and I intend to protect it.
  Not only does Social Security need protection, as Conor Lamb 
understands, but it needs to be expanded. It needs this, because the 
last time that this Congress did anything significant with respect to 
Social Security was in 1983.
  In 1983, Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States, Tip 
O'Neill was the Speaker of the House. And you know what? A Democrat and 
Republican were able to come together and change Social Security and 
make sure that it would be there for future generations.
  However, they didn't do a number of things that would have enhanced 
the program, and it has been 36 years since there has been any change 
to Social Security, the Nation's premier insurance program.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the viewing audience: Have any of your insurance 
premiums gone up since 1983? And, of course, everyone knows what the 
answer is.
  It is not the people's fault at home or citizens all across this 
Nation. It is the responsibility of the United States Congress to make 
sure that the Nation's premier program, a program that not only 
provides a pension, but provides disability and spousal and dependent 
coverage, is there.
  It is the only program out there that provides the full faith and 
credit of the United States Government, and, by the way, has never 
missed a payment.
  Yet, if we do nothing, if we continue to kick the can down the road, 
then by as soon as 2034, just 15 years from now, there will be a 21 
percent cut in the program, sending many people on the program 
currently into poverty.
  That cannot stand. The time for us to act is now.
  That is especially true given the circumstances that have taken place 
in this Nation, especially as recent as 2008.
  If you will observe the chart on my left here, what this demonstrates 
is essentially from 2007 to 2010, the Great Recession, what we have 
witnessed happen to Americans with respect to their overall wealth and 
assets.
  What we see is that only 10 percent of the people of this country, 
and they happen to be in the top 10 percent of wealth, have recovered 
from the Great Recession. Just 10 percent.
  Imagine if Social Security had been privatized, as was intended by 
the Bush administration in 2005. Thankfully, it was not, because people 
depend on Social Security. They depend on Social Security because they 
know it is the only guarantee that is there for them.
  I have gone across this country speaking to people about Social 
Security and our enhancements and what we do, and I take with me two 
props: one is the actuary report of Social Security 2100, the bill that 
Conor Lamb and 206 other Members of this body are original cosponsors 
of; and I also carry with me this Starbucks coffee. This happens to be 
empty, but it is part of my prop, and I will get to that shortly.
  But what we said to the actuary is that what we wanted to do is make 
sure that Social Security not only remains solvent for beyond the 75 
years, as it is required by law, but we needed to enhance it. The last 
time it was enhanced by this body was 36 years ago.
  So that is why Conor Lamb and myself and so many others have stepped 
forward to say, let's add and enhance this, and let's do it in four 
ways.
  Number 1, let's have a 2 percent across-the-board increase for all 
Social Security recipients.
  Number 2, let's not let anyone who has paid their quarters into 
Social Security, who has worked hard all of their lives, retire into 
poverty.
  Unfortunately for many Americans, especially women, that is the case. 
Why would that be so? It is so because women have been the caregivers 
in our society and had to take time off to raise families, to take care 
of children. Also, unfortunately, women have found themselves in the 
workplace earning 77 cents for every dollar their male counterpart was. 
This change in the law will correct that.
  We also found, and Conor Lamb pointed this out several times, that 
there were people that he talked to who were still working, many out of 
necessity, some because of the joy that they find and the fulfillment 
of their lives in being active and busy, but nonetheless, they found 
that they were being taxed on their Social Security, because back in 
1983, we did not index Social Security, so that back then, if you were 
single and making more than $24,000, you were taxed, if you were a 
married couple and making more than $32,000, you were taxed.
  So what Conor and others said is, let's raise that to $50,000 for an 
individual and $100,000 for a couple, and immediately 12 million 
Americans will get a tax break under this bill.
  We also wanted to adopt something that the AARP has fought for, which 
is to have a COLA that actually reflects the costs that you incur when 
you are older, whether that is doctor visits, whether it is nutritional 
concerns, whether it is physical therapy, or whether it is heating and 
cooling your home. These are the things that you need and are important 
to you, and that is what the COLA should reflect, and that is what we 
put in the bill.
  Most of all, we have to make sure that the bill is sustainably 
solvent beyond 75 years, as is required by law, so that no one in any 
generation could say that it won't be there in the future.
  In fact, it has always been there. It has never missed a payment. It 
has a 99 percent loss ratio.
  What does that mean? That means it is the most efficient government 
program there is. It is the Nation's insurance program.
  I have heard my good friend and colleague talk about this often, and 
I yield the floor to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Lamb).
  Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Larson for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here tonight.
  Last year, during a long campaign season, two campaigns and two 
elections, there was no issue in western Pennsylvania that came to me 
from my constituents more often than Social Security, and it was 
usually with a heavy heart.
  I will never forget one man who came up to me at an event. He was 
about 77 years old. He told me how he started paying into Social 
Security when he was 12. They don't really make them like that anymore, 
but in western Pennsylvania, people started working at earlier and 
earlier ages to make ends meet.
  The gentleman had worked in a factory. He had been laid off. He told 
me: We were in the streets, not sure where to go during the day, but we 
didn't want our kids to know that we were out of work.
  He had five kids.
  He became a janitor, got hurt on the job, needed his union to stick 
up for him, but that cut into his prime years of earning.
  So the gentleman becomes 65, he retires, eventually collects Social 
Security, but he still works to this day as a janitor.
  So he is telling me all about his life, and he pulls out one of those 
big key rings that every janitor seems to have, and he shoves it into 
my hand. He had pulled off of it the dog tag that he carried when he 
served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the 1950s.
  He pressed it into my palm and he just looked up at me and said: 
Don't you break your promise to us. If you get a chance to go down to 
Washington, D.C., you fight for Social Security, you fight for 
Medicare. You promised these programs to us and you have got to keep 
your promise.

  I will tell you, I don't think a man his age and his experience 
wanted to have to stand there and ask a 33-year-old young congressional 
candidate to stick up for him in that way.
  That was a promise that we made, and it is not an entitlement. It is 
something he paid into for over 45, 50 years of a working life.
  Mr. Speaker, I wonder if Mr. Larson has met constituents like that 
back in Connecticut as well.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, no question about it. We were 
just at a senior center in Elmwood on Friday and had the same 
experience.
  I think, really, people find it annoying when this is called an 
entitlement, especially when they know they have worked all of their 
lives for this. They

[[Page H3125]]

only had to look at their pay stub to know that they had made these 
contributions.
  To say that this is an entitlement, when you look at the investment 
that you have made over a lifetime, nothing could be further from the 
truth, and that is why it is so important that we get the Social 
Security 2100 Act passed into law.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. LAMB. It is the most important thing we can work on in this 
Congress for many of the people who are affected.
  The problem is, as you said, it hasn't been adjusted since the 1980s, 
and a couple of really important things have happened since then. When 
Tip and President Reagan struck the last deal on Social Security, there 
wasn't the heroin epidemic that we see today.
  One of the problems that we have in western Pennsylvania is that we 
are losing a lot of young parents in their 30s and 40s to heroin, 
fentanyl, and prescription drug overdoses. Because they come from good 
families, their aunts, their uncles, and their parents are stepping up 
and taking care of the kids who are left behind.
  I have run into dozens and dozens of senior citizens in western PA 
who are raising kids on their Social Security benefits. They are 
working part time, too. They can barely make ends meet. Social Security 
wasn't designed for that.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the 
gentleman points that out because people, oftentimes, think of Social 
Security only as a pension benefit. As he just pointed out, one in five 
recipients are currently on Social Security who are not retired, who 
are spouses, or there are children because of a death in the family 
that took place.
  So here it is, the Nation's single most important insurance program 
taking care of those individuals, even in cases of calamity, whether it 
be through the opioid crisis or whatever the case may be. That is why 
Social Security remains so vitally important to all generations, at all 
ages.
  Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, it is why we need to make sure that those who 
do choose to continue to work, and many will, see the benefits of that 
work.
  Here we are calling for a tax cut and promising to account for every 
penny of it with a proper adjustment to the other taxes and the payroll 
tax. You would almost think we were Republicans standing up here 
tonight. But the Republicans, instead, have chosen a path through their 
tax bill to cut taxes for a very different group of people, the people 
who make more than $500,000 a year, and the people on the boards of the 
largest and most powerful corporations in our country.
  I think that is what frustrates so many people today, that the 
average Social Security benefit now, at this point, is--what?--about 
$16,000. The people who benefited from the tax cut in 2017 make 
$500,000, $1 million, or even more than that per year. There are far 
more people earning closer to $16,000 in this country than there are at 
the very top.
  If we are going to have special breaks in the Tax Code for anyone, or 
if we are going to do anything with our tax laws to benefit anyone, it 
should be those folks who are just trying to get by. They are not going 
on vacation with this money. They are not going to Disney World. And 
they are not going on a cruise. They are paying for prescription drugs, 
and they are paying for groceries.
  Mr. Clyburn just talked about hunger and how Fritz Hollings was 
fighting hunger 40 and 50 years ago. Well, senior citizens in the 
United States are going hungry today. They have a very simple choice. 
They have a certain amount of money, and they can go to the grocery 
store or to the drugstore, but they can't do both. Usually, they go to 
the drugstore to stay alive, and they skimp on the rest.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman makes an 
excellent point. There is nobody who is getting wealthy on the Social 
Security program, but it is essential to their very existence and 
essential to our economy. Every penny that goes into Social Security 
comes right back and is recirculated through our economy because these 
are the things that are needed to sustain life.
  It is such an important point, Mr. Speaker. I said earlier that I 
carry this Starbucks, and you make an apt comparison here. In terms of 
the $2 trillion tax cut that was passed in the previous session, 83 
percent of that tax cut goes to the Nation's wealthiest 1 percent. When 
you contrast that to the bill we are proposing that says that we want 
to make sure that people are able to subsist on a program of insurance 
that they have paid into, it seems utterly cruel that this hasn't 
already taken effect and taken hold. What is even more, we are not 
going to do it by passing on debt to a future generation. It is paid 
for.
  All those recipients, I know they say it in Connecticut, and I heard 
it again in West Hartford, and I know the gentleman has heard it as 
well in his communities: We don't want to be a burden, not to our 
families or future generations.
  Well, they have never been a burden. They were the generations that 
made this Nation what we are today, so we paid for this bill. We paid 
for it in two ways.
  Number one, we lift the cap over $400,000. So if you are one of the 
six-tenths of 1 percent in this Nation who make over $400,000, we are 
going to lift the cap off that Social Security so that you are paying 
what the guy making $50,000 is.
  Then we do something else. We do what Roosevelt intended and what 
every American knows because they consult their bill. We increase the 
contribution that you make in your paycheck by 1 percent.
  But then we say: No, even 1 percent is a lot. We are going to phase 
that in over 25 years to accomplish what should have been done in 1983, 
indexing it and phasing it in slowly over time.
  What does that mean? That means a person earning $50,000 a year would 
pay 50 cents a week to make sure that he gets all the benefits we have 
described for Social Security and that it is solvent beyond 75 years. 
For 50 cents a week, a disability policy, dependent coverage, spousal 
coverage, and a pension, you could not purchase that in the private 
market. It is the full faith and credit of the United States Government 
that makes it possible because of the individual contribution.
  That is where this Starbucks comes in. When I am at a public forum 
and when I am doing a townhall, I say to people: How much is this 
Starbucks?

  They will ask if it is a latte. I say yes. They say $4.50.
  I go: You are right. Or 9 weeks of Social Security payments if you 
are making $50,000 a year. Or if you are that individual making over 
$400,000 a year, it costs more to buy this Starbucks latte than it will 
to save Social Security.
  We can do this together. This is why we have been going all across 
the country. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, as well, for going out 
and putting this online and on Facebook, making sure that we are 
getting the message out that, no, you are not a burden to us; you are 
our fellow Americans.
  This isn't a Democratic or a Republican or an independent plan; this 
is the American plan. In fact, it was President Reagan who enhanced it, 
and it was President Eisenhower who enhanced and grew the program of 
Social Security. That is why it becomes vitally important that we help 
out our fellow citizens, especially with this disparity and, as in the 
chart we showed before, with many Americans still not recovered from 
the Great Recession of 2008.
  Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, how many programs do we really have that are 
truly universal, that are truly for every American, in which we all 
share the sacrifice and we all share the benefit? We are all in this 
together at the end of the day.
  A very wise man said to me once that one of the problems we have in 
America today is people think the economy is like the weather. You 
might be able to predict it, and you might be able to prepare for what 
is coming, but you just can't do anything about it.
  Well, that is not true. The economy is a set of rules written down on 
pieces of paper and it is the set of people who are there to enforce 
them.
  This is a better rule than anything the other side has. This is a 
rule that allows us to keep our promise. This is a rule that says, if 
you paid into this for all your working lives and now all you are 
asking for is about $16,000 a

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year to be able to live with some dignity in your old age, after you 
finished the project of a lifetime of building the country that we all 
enjoy, we are going to make sure that is there for you, and we are 
going to make sure we keep our promise.
  We think it is a pretty good bet to side with the folks who are 
getting $16,000 a year over the folks who are making $16 million a 
year. We think that is a pretty good bet, and we are all going to share 
the burden together going forward.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Larson for allowing me to be part of this 
great bill.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
joining me.
  I thank Social Security Works, National Committee to Preserve Social 
Security and Medicare, AFL-CIO, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Arc of 
the United States, American Federation of Government Employees, 
International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, 
Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security Task Force, 
Justice in Aging, Association of University Centers on Disability, and 
The Senior Citizens League for their endorsement of this outstanding 
piece of legislation. I thank Mr. Lamb and the 206 other original 
cosponsors of the Social Security 2100 Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.

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