[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15575-15576]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         CEOS INSTRUCT WASHINGTON HOW TO AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Highly paid CEOs are in town to tell America how to 
avoid the fiscal cliff. The top priority of the ``fix the debt'' CEOs 
is to cut the essential commitments of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social 
Security. No skin off their noses.
  Sorry, you 50 million Americans who are in poverty. Too bad, you 
millions of children, elderly, and poor who rely on Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid. Unemployed? You're out of luck if you lose 
unemployment benefits.
  These 71 CEOs who come to Washington to preach fiscal austerity have 
average retirement assets of $9.1 million. That's about a $65,000 check 
each month for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, in contrast, the 
average Social Security check for retired workers is $1,237 a month.

[[Page 15576]]

  Of all these debt-cutting CEOs, only two have sufficient assets in 
their companies' pension funds to meet their obligations to their own 
workers. The rest who pay any pension at all have underfunded their 
workers' pension funds by $103 billion. Those who have already shoved 
their own retiring workers off the fiscal cliff want to do it to the 
rest of the middle class and the poor in America. No way.

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