DeLauro Delivers Speech on Values, Social Security

DeLauro Delivers Speech on Values, Social Security

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) delivered the following speech at Georgetown University today. The event was sponsored by the College Democrats and Women in Politics.

"It is always good to be here at Georgetown among friends - so many good, young Democrats engaged in the process, fighting for change, who understand the stakes of today's political debates and want to take part in them. As the future of the country, no one has more riding on them than you. You know better than anyone that their outcomes will determine the course of this country for decades to come.

"And as College Democrats, you are committed to the values of our Party. Not only are you working to elect Democratic candidates, perhaps more importantly, you are encouraging involvement and building excitement within the Party, providing your peers with the skills and experiences necessary to reinvigorate the Party from the grassroots. That is something very precious - and so important right now.

"Tonight, I wanted to discuss the values that not only unite us Democrats but as Americans - particularly as to how they have shaped and informed the Social Security program over the years. Indeed, we hear so much about the importance of values today - but oddly enough, little about what they are, where they come from and what their implications are in government and society. And so tonight, I would like to speak about that nexus between values and public policy, a little about how my values shaped my own views and led me into public life, and how in the Social Security system we find a true reflection of those values in the pursuit of the common good.

"We can all agree that values encompass so much more than the cultural flashpoints with which they are often associated in the media today. Values should not be reduced to one or two political issues. Rather, they are so much broader than that - the guiding principles on which we conduct our lives. Given to us by our parents and to them by their parents, one's values are what give life meaning. They ground us and provide the ethical framework within which we conduct our lives and raise our families.

"Mine were given to me by my parents, who came to this country as Italian immigrants. In our household, I was constantly reminded of the value of working hard to get ahead and giving back to a country that had given so much to us. My father, who dropped out of school in the seventh grade, largely because students made fun of his broken English, went on to become a proud veteran of this country - he served his community. He sat on New Haven's City Council, as did my mother, who served there for 35 years - well into her 80's.

"Working in a sweatshop sewing collars for pennies before going on to a life of public service, my mother was a driving force in my life and career. But to be sure, faith played a large role in shaping my values as well, having attended Catholic school from elementary school to college. It was there that I learned to nourish my mind and my heart - to reach out, to work hard, to fulfill my potential and be whatever I wanted to be. But it also taught me about right and wrong, personal responsibility and how to nourish my community, my neighbors - to give something back to my world, to the people of that world.

"In a broader sense, it was the church that bound us together as a community in my neighborhood - in our schools, in our hospitals. My father received communion daily - and lived his faith with commitment. Our local parish and our kitchen table were our community center - where people gathered to share their lives and help one another. Every night around my family's kitchen table, I saw how faith could serve as the nexus between family and community. There, I would witness firsthand how my parents helped solve the problems of people in our neighborhood.

"With my parents' example and my Catholic upbringing, I learned the vital connection between family, faith, responsibility, community, and working for the common good - that values learned at home and at church effected change at the community level both profound and undeniable. It showed me that government can and must play a critical role in helping people make the most of their own abilities and how to meet their responsibilities to each other and society as a whole.

"My own story is hardly unique. Many of these values have helped shape America's public policy over the course of our nation's history. Indeed, many of the economic and social achievements of the past century have their roots in this vision of opportunity and responsibility, community, a recognition of our obligations to each other - including Medicaid, Head Start, the child tax credit, and the GI Bill, to name but a few.

"Perhaps the ultimate legislative expression of our nation's shared values and those I learned growing up is Social Security, which for 7 decades now has tied generation to generation, ensuring that those seniors have a secure retirement after a lifetime of work. Social Security was borne in part out of FDR's appreciation for Catholic Social Teaching and Monsignor John Ryan's role in advocating programs based on the social letters of Pope Pius the Eleventh and particularly Pope Leo the Thirteenth's Rerum Novarum, which read, "Among the several purposes of a society, one should try to arrange for…a fund out of which the members may be effectually helped in their needs, not only in the cases of accident, but also in sickness, old age, and distress." In that respect, Social Security was the embodiment of those teachings - a declaration that our human rights are realized in community.

"Such sentiments were reflected in FDR's words to the Congress in 1934, when he said, "We are compelled to employ the active interest of the Nation as a whole through government in order to encourage a greater security for each individual who composes it."

"For FDR, Social Security was one way we could promote and maintain our shared values by rewarding work and ensuring a decent retirement for those who have worked a lifetime. And by depending on and encouraging younger generations to take responsibility, too, Social Security reinforced the idea that in America, we do not leave every man or women to fend for himself or herself - that we do not tolerate the impoverishment of our senior population. Those are our nation's values and they are perpetuated by the very construct of our Social Security program.

"Indeed, with the first Social Security check issued, poverty among the elderly began to drop. In the 1950s, more than 30 percent of elderly Americans lived out their last years in poverty - today that figure is about 10 percent, with 2 out of 3 seniors today relying on Social Security as the prime source of their monthly income, including three-quarters of all elderly women.

"And Social Security is not just for people like our parents and grandparents - a third of the 47 million people who rely on the program are the disabled, widows and children. All told, that is 47 million people—parents, grandparents, widows and children—who do not have to rely solely on their families for financial support because they have the help of Social Security.

"For women who on average earn less and spend less time in the workforce, Social Security is a blessing. Women comprise nearly 60 percent of all seniors on Social Security - a majority of whom would be living in poverty without it. More than half of all women receiving benefits do so as the spouse of a retired worker, but for 4 in 10 women living on their own, the program accounts for 90 percent of their retirement income.

"So essentially, Social Security functions not only as a safety net for older Americans, but in a way, for the rest of us - a kind of family insurance guaranteeing that we can live our own lives and raise our own children, confident that our parents and loved ones have something to rely on and can live independently of us. It is without a doubt the most successful, efficient middle-class retirement program we have - a "national achievement" that we can be proud of as individuals and as members of a good and decent society.

"Yet today, the commitment to opportunity and community out of which Social Security was created has frayed. For sure, a coarseness to our culture today in our politics and in the media has deepened divisions in society. But I think it goes deeper than that. Today, pleas for community and the common good have taken a backseat to appeals to self-interest, sometimes greed, and extreme individualism - policies that make us more unequal and divided. And where government was once seen as a vehicle for our shared values, today it is often viewed with suspicion and mistrust.

"Indeed, no debate is more symbolic of the forces at play in today's society than the one surrounding the future of Social Security. Despite the program's unqualified success, the president wants to change it. The reason he gives is that in 2018, benefits being paid out begin to exceed what Social Security is taking in payroll taxes, even though Social Security will be able to pay 100 percent of benefits until 2041. Even after 2041, the Social Security Trust Fund does not go bankrupt, because the program will still be able to pay between 70 and 80 percent of its benefits.

"Congress must address the funding shortfall in the middle of the century. Yet what President Bush is proposing is that we radically change this successful program - privatizing Social Security by diverting a third of payroll taxes that pay benefits today into private, individual accounts that can be invested in the stock market.

"I think the Catholic Bishops had it right, when they wrote extensively on this issue at the end of the 1990's as Republicans were advocating for Social Security's privatization. The Bishops said then that Social Security had been established as an insurance program in which, quote, "society as a whole buffers the individual and collective risks that workers and their families face." They went on to say that turning Social Security into an investment vehicle for individuals, quote, "does not guarantee an adequate or assured retirement program" for our senior population.

"But that is precisely what President Bush wants to do. He wants turn Social Security into an investment program - a tool to create personal wealth. And I fail to see how a program benefiting our national community, rooted in values that promote the common good and reinforce the idea that we are all in this together, is improved by private accounts. These values go to the heart of what I believe as a Democrat and as a Catholic.

"Besides, privatization does nothing to address the expected shortfall in the current Social Security system - the reason President Bush brought up privatization in the first place. In fact, by taking money out of the trust fund to create private accounts, the president's proposal makes the problem worse. Secondly, privatization will balloon our half-trillion dollar deficit by as much as $5 trillion in the next 20 years because we will still have to pay benefits to current retirees at the same time we are taking money out of the system to create private accounts. That means higher interest rates for buying a house, a car or going back to school.

"Third, we would be eliminating the program's guaranteed benefit and requiring benefit cuts that the Administration itself has estimated will be as steep as 40 percent - all for a plan that does not even address the underlying problem. The amount retirees get from Social Security is already modest - about $955 per month, $11,500 per year, enough to pay for most basic needs, but hardly enough to get by on alone.

"And for women, for whom Social Security has been such a success, the effects of privatization would be disastrous, as confirmed by a recent report by the National Women's Law Center. For 29 percent of women, Social Security is the only retirement package available. Privatization would replace the program's progressive benefit structure with private accounts based only on a worker's contributions to the account - cutting the average widow's benefit in my state of Connecticut to a paltry $518 per month.

"And privatization is not only a bad deal for our mothers and grandmothers - but for young women as well. For all our gains, women still earn less—77 cents for every dollar men earn—even though we live longer. And the Social Security Administration itself predicts that 65 years from now, 40 percent of married women will still receive benefits based on their husband's higher earnings record.

"You might be asking - but what about the increased benefits from the stock market? Well, you do not get to keep the full Social Security and the full private account. The average private account would be taxed at 70 percent through monthly deductions from your Social Security check. This privatization tax would come on top of the benefit cuts that will affect all Social Security beneficiaries.

"It is complicated, but when you retire, you essentially have to pay the money you put into your private account back to the government. So, at the same time that the private accounts would be adding to your income, a large portion of that additional income would be offset dollar for dollar through reductions in your guaranteed Social Security check. And that would be regardless of how well your private account performed.

"But well beyond the financial implications of privatization—and there are many—are its moral implications. As The National Catholic Reporter editorialized recently, what we risk losing with privatization is so much more than money. We risk losing the agreement that we have maintained for the past half-century that we are all in this together. We risk losing faith with the understanding that all workers—poorest to richest—contribute to something in common and that everyone gets something in return. And we abandon the sense that despite differences in political outlook and social standing, we all believe that is good for society to guarantee a minimum standard of economy security for its oldest, disabled and widowed citizens. That is what privatization risks.

"As someone who has had the privilege of serving in the Congress of the United States for over a decade-and-a-half, representing more than a half-million people, I believe that government has an obligation to play a role in making opportunity real - a moral obligation. I do not believe in every man or woman for himself or herself. I believe in values like shared responsibility and personal responsibility. I believe in what we can achieve together. Those are the principles at the core of Social Security. They are what drive me - they are what drive you. They are what drive each of us as Democrats and Americans.

"The fight to preserve Social Security and make it as successful in the 21st Century as it was in the last is a struggle that every American has a stake in - but no one more than the younger generation. This is a defining challenge for us - a statement about the kind of country we want America to be. As Franklin Roosevelt told Congress, Social Security is a "return to values lost in the course of our economic development and expansion."

"That is our challenge today, as well - to bring change, while affirming our values as Americans and as Democrats. Indeed, in 1983, bankruptcy was only a year off - one year, not 37. Back then, Congress and President Reagan worked together on a bipartisan commission that ensured Social Security would be solvent for generations. And they did it not by changing the fundamental nature of the program but by making minor adjustments to the benefits and financing structures.

"In my view, that is the example of bipartisanship we should draw upon. With so much at stake for our communities and the country, I believe we need that kind of bipartisanship in this debate - one that achieves consensus, strengthens the program's guaranteed benefit in retirement and reflects our nation's shared values. Because this fight is not only about stopping the bad idea that is privatization - it is about promoting and maintaining the good idea that was and is Social Security.

"As students looking forward to lives of your own, raising families and embarking on careers, you have been given a remarkable opportunity - to put the values your parents instilled in you to use in society, in whatever career you choose.

"My challenge to you today is: how are you going to seize this opportunity - to give back and have a say in this debate which is so important to our shared values? What role will you play in ensuring future generations have the quality of life you and your families have had? I do not pretend to have all the answers. But if my own experiences have taught me anything, it is that bringing our values to the public sphere is not a matter of expediency but of moral and civic obligation - a call I hope each of you choose to answer.

"Thank you for this honor and this opportunity."

http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2005/April/Catholic_speech_04_19_05.html