[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 54 (Tuesday, March 25, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1819-S1820]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Social Security
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, Social Security is under attack. It is
under attack from Donald Trump. Social Security is under attack from
Republicans. Social Security is under attack from Elon Musk. Social
Security is under attack from greedy billionaires who want to loot
Americans' hard-earned money to line their own pockets.
Trump, Musk, and DOGE know they can't come right out and cut Social
Security. That would be wildly unpopular. Instead, they are revving up
their chain saw--cutting staff, reducing services, closing offices, and
lying about the program, finding so-called fraud where no fraud exists.
Here is their reckless roadmap: first, lie about the program to
undermine it with the public; second, use those lies as an excuse to
gut Social Security and cut benefits; and third, raise the retirement
age and privatize Social Security, handing your benefits over to Wall
Street--making the billionaires richer and our seniors poorer. It is a
very shameful plan.
Now cue Elon Musk and his DOGE lackeys who descended on the Social
Security Administration, claiming there are millions of dead people
over the age of 150, over the age of 200, over the age of 360 years.
They are claiming that people born in 1665 are claiming Social Security
benefits, that they are fraudulently applying for benefits. The only
problem with what they are saying is that none of it is true. They are
just lying.
Former inspectors general and Social Security Administration leaders
have never found any of this phantom fraud--none of it.
But following the Trump playbook, Musk, DOGE, and Republicans have
repeated this lie over and over again. Again, the key to their
messaging on Social Security is lying about Social Security. That is
their campaign plan.
So Trump, in his State of the Union, repeated the lie, telling the
country that there were millions of people fraudulently receiving
Social Security benefits. That is the Trump way: If at first you don't
succeed, lie, lie again.
While Trump and Musk see 200-year-old ghosts--360-year-old ghosts--
collecting Social Security benefits, they are gutting the Social
Security Administration to the bare bones. That lie of massive fraud in
Social Security is now their excuse to make changes that could force
Grandma and Grandpa and people with disabilities to travel more than
100 miles to sign up for Social Security benefits. They want to make it
as tough as possible for Grandma and Grandpa and for people with
disabilities to collect Social Security--just make it something
difficult.
The Social Security website crashed 4 times in 10 days this month.
They are bringing all the DOGE boys who are supposed to be geniuses--
AI, bringing efficiency to the government. The Social Security website
crashed 4 times in 10 days just in the past month.
But Trump and Musk, they won't stop there. They are also cutting the
phone lines. By the end of this month, telephone services could be
eliminated at the Social Security Administration, with assistance only
offered online or in person or at a field office. So good luck, Grandma
and Grandpa. Sorry you didn't take that computer course 40 years ago.
Sorry that you are 85 now. Can't call in any longer; you are going to
have to figure out how to do everything online. It is just another way
of making it harder and harder for people who are older to be able to
collect.
The person running the Agency right now has already pushed out more
than 12 percent of the staff, and he has admitted that the Agency's
phone service ``sucks.'' That is what he said, talking about his own
work at the Agency. Yeah, you did such a great job on it that now you
yourself say that the phone service sucks. Excellent work. You are
deliberately trying to make the system fail.
And he said the quiet part out loud, that Musk and DOGE are the ones
really in charge at the Social Security Administration. And they have
one primary goal right now: find fraud, despite the truth that they
have not reported any yet because there is so little to find at the
Social Security Administration.
But by hollowing out the Agency--cutting staff, closing offices, and
making it harder to access benefits--the Trump administration is
effectively cutting Social Security benefits. But if you complain too
loudly, the Trump administration might just accuse you of being a
fraudster as well. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, another
billionaire, said last week that his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn't
complain about missing her Social Security check and that the only
person who would complain would be a fraudster themself, because they
would be so upset, the fraudster.
But his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn't complain. Maybe if
everyone had a billionaire as a son-in-law, maybe you wouldn't
complain. But that is not 99.999 percent of all people receiving Social
Security benefits. They would be very concerned if that check did not,
in fact, arrive. Maybe if your son-in-law is a billionaire, you can
afford to miss a check.
But how out of touch can Lutnick be because, without Social Security,
more than 22 million people would be thrown into poverty. Get that
number? Without the check they get each month, 22 million Americans
would go into poverty. That includes over 16 million seniors, including
268,000 in Massachusetts and nearly 1 million children. Nearly one in
four people drawing Social Security rely on it for 100 percent of their
income.
Let me say that again because it is very important to internalize the
reality of our country in 2025: One in four people receiving a Social
Security check rely upon it for 100 percent of all of their income. If
that gets stopped, people don't have access to it, those people
immediately go to poverty because they are living check to check.
And more than two-thirds of seniors rely on it for the majority of
their income. That would have been my mother and father--my father who
drove a truck for the Hood milk company. They were dependent upon
Social Security. There was not a big pension in the old days, so you
needed Social Security just to make it by week by week, month by month.
And 55 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries are women. This
increases to 66 percent for beneficiaries aged 85. Two-thirds of all
people receiving a Social Security check over 85 are women. That is who
they are playing with here. They are truly playing with Grandma, her
life, her security, what she earned, what she deserves. Social Security
would do to women--who only still earn 82 cents to a man's dollar and
live longer after retiring--they would perform an enormous disservice
for all of those women. A greater proportion of women's retirement
income comes from Social Security.
For the millions of seniors that rely almost entirely on Social
Security for their income, a missed check means missed meals, missed
medications, missed rent payments. That is who they are in our country
right now.
Social Security is not rife with fraud. It is not a Ponzi scheme, as
Elon Musk has said. It isn't something that can just be ``turned off,''
as Trump's acting director threatened to do in response to a court
order blocking DOGE access to your private Social Security information.
He threatened to turn it off unless all this information about every
one of us in the Social Security system was turned over to DOGE. Well,
where we all worked, the income that we earned, every single job--that
is all there in order for Social Security to make the right decisions
about how big
[[Page S1820]]
the check is that we get. And Trump's acting director at Social
Security threatened, in response to a court order blocking DOGE access
to your private Social Security, to just, basically, turn it all off.
This is, bottom line, a huge threat to Americans, to seniors, to
people with disabilities in our Nation. It is a direct assault.
The nominee to be the next Social Security administrator, Frank
Bisignano, today before the Senate, refused to undo any of the harmful
actions taken by DOGE. He refused to even acknowledge DOGE was behind
the cuts and closures. He refused to call benefits delayed benefits
denied. He refused to commit to adequate staffing levels for the
Agency.
For these reasons, I am refusing to give him my vote to be our next
administrator. I am voting no on the administrator. I am saying
absolutely unqualified for this job because he doesn't understand the
core of this intergenerational responsibility and obligation that we
have to seniors in our country.
The Trump administration can tell lie after lie, but Americans know
the truth. Social Security is a promise we make to current and future
generations. For our parents, for our grandparents, and for all of us,
the assurance of Social Security means that we need never worry about
living out our final years in poverty in the United States of America.
That is why Social Security was put on the books in the 1930s, because
of the wave of poverty among seniors in our Nation. People have
contributed to Social Security throughout their entire lives. Social
Security is not an entitlement; it is an earned benefit.
But this isn't a new formula that Trump and Musk and Republicans have
come up with. In 2005, President George W. Bush and Republicans tried
to privatize Social Security. Can you imagine what would have befallen
our Nation's seniors if George W. Bush and Republicans had succeeded
and then millions of Americans' nest eggs had been wrapped up in the
2008 stock market crash? Our ``greatest generation'' would have become
a destitute generation.
Today, Donald Trump and his billionaire advisers, like Secretary
Lutnick, have said that a recession wouldn't be so bad, that it would
be ``worth it.'' A recession would be worth it. Ask people who lived
through the Great Depression, like my parents. How did that go for them
and their families? I will tell you what: In my family, it didn't go
well. It set my family on both sides--my father's and mother's side--
back an entire generation. That is how devastating the Great Depression
was.
So tell the retired workers; tell their survivors; tell the
vulnerable, the poor, the disabled Americans for whom Social Security
isn't just a budget line, it is a lifeline. But Trump only cares about
his billionaire donors' bottom lines.
Social Security has paid out benefits on schedule for nearly 70
years. But to keep our promise in the future, changes to the program
will have to be made. To shore up Social Security, we must require
millionaires and billionaires, like Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, and
Elon Musk, to pay as much into Social Security as everyone else. It is
time they pay their fair share and stop trying to pay for their tax
cuts with the earnings of those who built this country.
It is essential that Social Security be preserved for today's
retirees and for future generations. It has served as a never-fail
insurance program for every single American worker's retirement since
the program's inception. It is the crown jewel of the New Deal. And
Republicans have been going after it from day one. Republicans haven't
been able to destroy Social Security yet, and we are not going to let
Trump and Musk or billionaires succeed in looting all of that Social
Security money so they get a tax break.
The health of all of those seniors is more important than the wealth
of the billionaires who will benefit from the slashes to the Social
Security system, which they are planning.
Elon Musk said the truth about how they view Social Security. He
called it a Ponzi scheme. That is all you have to know about the
Republican Party. They opposed Social Security when it was put on the
books in the 1930s, and they always harbored an ancient animosity
towards Social Security; waiting for the moment, waiting for the
opportunity where they could slash Social Security to send us back to
before the 1930s when families were gutted, when there was no income
for Grandma and Grandpa. That is what we are talking about.
But I am going to tell you this: They are going to have a fight on
their hands. We are going to stand up and fight for them. We are going
to make sure that Social Security is preserved. We are going to make
sure that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that the Republican Party does
not destroy Social Security as we know it today. They have a fight on
their hands.
I am ready for this fight. I am ready to defend the seniors in our
Nation. I am ready to protect the disabled who depend upon Social
Security. This is the time to have this showdown, and they are going to
regret ever putting Social Security into play. I am ready for this
fight.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). Without objection, it is so
ordered.