Don't Touch Social Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, last year, candidate Trump, President- elect Trump, and now-President Trump repeatedly told the American people that he won't touch Social Security. We are now 2 months into his administration, and we are finding that the opposite is true.

A headline yesterday in The Washington Post read: ``Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down.''

Next to me is a poster board from The Wall Street Journal. Some people may say that The Washington Post is always critical of President Trump, but this is The Wall Street Journal, an impeccable, center-right newspaper whose headline states: ``Dealing With Social Security Is Heading From Bad to Worse.''

The agency that administers benefits is cutting staff and restricting benefits as part of the Department of Government Efficiency review, or DOGE, the Trump initiative.

Let's be more specific. What are some of those intentional policies that are being put into place? We know that there was a wave of those fork-in-the-road retirements that hit Social Security and reduced staff. We know that Social Security has already announced that the workforce is going to be reduced from 57,000 all across America to 50,000.

Some may say: What is wrong with that? We should sort of downsize our workforce, make them more efficient.

The fact of the matter is, if you look at how many people are beneficiaries today, with the baby boomer retirements that are swelling the ranks of Social Security beneficiaries, it is 73 million Americans now who are receiving Social Security benefits. These are people with retirement benefits, children who have lost a parent, and people on disability.

We now have a bigger-than-ever population of people collecting Social Security benefits and a reduced staff.

To put this in perspective, in 2010, not that long ago, the size of the Social Security workforce was 68,000, 18,000 more than what the Trump administration is targeting for today, and the number of beneficiaries in 2010 was 54 million Americans as opposed to 73 million Americans today. We have more people who need help with the Social Security system and fewer staff to help them navigate it.

In just 1 week from today, they are pretty much going to shut off phone service for Social Security beneficiaries who are trying to sign up with their bank information to get on Social Security. This is something that has been normal practice, using very precise identifiers to make sure that waste, fraud, and abuse do not occur.

By the way, Social Security's accuracy is 99.7 percent. That has been verified by outside audits and by the Social Security trustees. Yet, despite that track record, what they are going to tell Social Security beneficiaries, who sometimes struggle with online enrollment in other areas of their lives, is that they are not going to have the opportunity to use a phone service, which, again, has been in practice in the past for decades.

They are also closing 47 Social Security offices across the country. Again, at a time when the number of people who need to interact and interface with the Social Security system is bigger than ever, they are shutting down offices, laying off staff, and shutting off phone service.

The wait times, in terms of people trying to get appointments in person, are going to get longer. Just in the Northeast, we have already been told that the White Plains office in New York is going to be closed, and they are telling people to go to New Haven, Connecticut, my State. That is about a 2-hour drive for people if they want to have an in-person appointment who are now going to basically have a shuttered building in a very densely populated area outside of New York.

The notion that the Social Security system, by this administration, is not being trusted, the opposite is true. DOGE is behind this, as The Wall Street Journal reported. Elon Musk, in an interview with FOX News, made it crystal clear his goal is to eliminate Social Security and get $800 billion to $900 billion of savings out of the Social Security system, which we know today is probably one of the most efficient agencies in the Federal Government in terms of the accuracy of their payouts.

The pathway ahead of us is very crystal clear. Congress has to stand up as a coequal branch of government that enacted Social Security in 1935 and for 90 years--we are celebrating the 90th anniversary of Social Security--has been a pillar of middle-class retirement security and helping children who have lost a parent.

Mr. Speaker, it is not an entitlement. It is not welfare. It is an earned benefit that people pay into. They should get that benefit when it is their turn to get the help from Social Security that we promised as Congress.

Defend Social Security. Stand up for Social Security. Don't touch Social Security.

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