Social Security 2100 Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here this
evening to talk about and to follow two distinguished colleagues from
California and Pennsylvania who spoke with great eloquence about the
future, who were addressing the issue of student loans and student loan
debt that we are experiencing all across the country.

This evening, I am here to discuss Social Security. Currently, before
the Ways and Means Committee, we are addressing the issue of Social
Security that, as everybody knows, not only covers old age and
survivorship, but also disability.

That fund is due to expire in 2016 if Congress does not take action,
due to be cut severely and have an impact on so many Americans. And yet
all across this country, frankly, on a bipartisan basis on the
committee and from without the committee, people are talking about
coming up with solutions for Social Security.

That is why we have introduced the Social Security 2100 Act. Why
2100? Well, because we want to make sure that the program of Social
Security, which by law is required to make sure that it is solvent for
75 years, in fact, is, and that is what our proposal does.

But I want to talk about this in terms of a pragmatic, practical,
commonsense path forward to make sure that Social Security is not only
there for seniors who are currently receiving it, but for future
generations, as well.

Social Security is uniquely the most indispensable plan that the
government has been committed to.

We have a slide that I would like to put up that demonstrates exactly
how indispensable Social Security is.

Today, two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for the majority
of their income. Think about that for a moment. Of all the people that
you know, of all the retirees that you are associated with, two-thirds
of them rely on Social Security for a majority of their income.

The median retirement account balance for all Americans--all
Americans--is $2,500. Ask yourself, America: Is there anyone that could
sustain themselves or a family or a spouse with $2,500 in their
retirement accounts and savings?

Only 14 percent of private sector workers are participating in
defined benefit pensions. Well, what does that mean? That means that 86
percent of Americans are not. So what we are faced with in the United
States Congress really isn't a Social Security problem, because we all
know that Social Security works. Social Security has never missed a
payment, and Social Security is there to both help people who are
disabled, to help the spouse and the children who are survivors after
an untimely death, and it is there in retirement and serves as a
pension, as I said before, almost exclusively, for two-thirds of all of
America.

So simply stated, it makes no sense at all to cut Social Security. It
makes no sense at all to raise the age of Social Security.

Since 2008 and the Great Recession and the devastation that so many
Americans went through, people who had worked hard and played by the
rules and had invested their money in 401Ks, well, the reality is that
they saw their 401K become a 101K. So it is long overdue for Congress
to come together in a nonpartisan way to fully address this issue.

At the start of this session, our colleagues on the other side of the
aisle developed a rule. I commend them for this rule. The rule says
that you can't just address, simply, disability with respect to the
Social Security trust fund.

You have to address both disability and old age and survivors'
benefits collectively. That is the way the program has always been
addressed, and I commend them for underscoring what is a retirement
crisis and why we need to take these bold steps.

I say ``retirement crisis'' because you saw the statistic before
where only 14 percent of the private sector workers are participating
in defined benefit contributions. That simply cannot sustain us. What
this particular chart shows is that more seniors than ever are also
paying taxes on their Social Security benefits. So we have this
retirement crisis in which two-thirds of Americans are retiring with
just about Social Security as their only means of moving forward, their
only means of sustaining themselves.

To further compound that problem, the way the Social Security Act was
changed in 1983 has now found us in a situation in which taxable income
over $25,000 for a single person is subject to being taxed and $32,000 for a married couple. This is only escalating as more and more baby boomers retire into the system.

For example, in 1998--that was not that long ago--26 percent of all
seniors came under this law and were taxed under the current law. Just
last year, in 2014, that figure rose to 49 percent, and it is only
growing.

We need to address this issue. Why? Because more seniors, out of
necessity, are finding themselves working--working to make up for the
loss that they incurred from 2008 forward in their 401(k)'s and in
their investment portfolios, working to make ends meet.

One thing seniors understand and, I think, America understands is
this: Social Security is not an entitlement. Certainly, you are
entitled to Social Security payments; but why? You are entitled to them
because they are the insurance that you paid for.

It is the earned compensation that people, through their hard work
and sweat of their brow, have put into the system. The system is called
FICA, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. Those contributions have
been made by all Americans, and as I said earlier, they remain the bulk
work for the Nation's retirement program and are the safety net that
prevents seniors from retiring into poverty, that allows them to exist.

This is the time to focus on strengthening the Social Security
Program. This is the time we should be talking about expanding the
Social Security Program. It is because of the retirement crisis that we
find ourselves here, not for lack of contribution, not for lack of
effort, but because of the real economic conditions most families have
found themselves in. That is why we introduced the Social Security 2100
Act.

What does it do? First and foremost, it doesn't raise the national
debt at all. It is completely paid for. How do we know this? Because we
have an actuarial report.

The chief actuary for Social Security has determined that it exceeds
the 75-year limits in terms of its solvency so that Social Security
will not only be here now, tomorrow, and well into the future, but
Justin Bieber will be 106 years old, and Social Security will still be
there for him and for those of his generation as well.

It is that important and vital a program for our Nation so that it
needs our very specific and direct focus and attention.

With so many relying on Social Security, we also need to expand its
benefits. We are proposing a modest 2 percent increase across the
board, but we are also proposing what senior citizens know already,
which is that the system that we have of calculating the COLA is
inadequate and does not work.

Most importantly, it doesn't reflect what seniors actually pay, what
they actually have to go through in terms of the costs of heating their
homes, of buying prescription drugs, and of paying for the escalating
costs of food and heat and energy.

We have devised a system--endorsed widely by groups that embrace it--
that we call the CPIE, the consumer price index based on the actual
costs of the elderly, with the E standing for elderly in this
circumstance. It makes sure that there are sufficient amounts of money
that are there to provide for our senior citizens.

The next thing that we do is to make sure that nobody can retire into
poverty. We raise the minimum benefit to 125 percent of poverty, which
would amount to--in so many cases, at the lower end of the economic
scale--a 50 percent increase in benefits for the poorest amongst us.

When I say ``poor,'' I mean the working poor, people who are pulled
into the system. Again, this is not an entitlement. This is earned
compensation. This is the insurance that so many have already paid for
and why this has become so important and so vital a test.

We also provide a tax cut for 11 million working seniors. Let me
repeat that. We provide a tax cut for 11 million seniors.

How do we do that? As we said earlier, people, out of necessity, have
found themselves in this system. They have found themselves in a
position in which, in retirement, they are finding themselves working.
They work hard for their money, but as I said earlier, if they are
single and if their combined incomes are more than $25,000, they are
taxed. If they are a couple and their combined incomes are $32,000,
they are taxed.

These numbers are easily reached and are being exceeded, and that is
why we are recommending the tax cut by raising those limits and by
providing those to working seniors, and there is a value that they
bring to all of our communities with the break that they need so that
they can sustain themselves and can also continue to pay their way in
retirement with the benefits that they have earned, with the benefits
that they have paid for but that haven't kept pace with the economic
times.

It provides an across-the-board benefit increase of 2 percent for
every senior, and it improves the cost-of-living adjustments by going
to CPIE. As I said before, a new minimum benefit to ensure that no one
who has paid into the system retires into poverty is flat out fair.

You may ask: How do you pay for this? Certainly, at the outset of
this, we made the boast that this is solvent into the next century,
beyond the 75 years that is required, signed off by the Social Security
chief actuary, who has determined the solvency of the program.

How do we do this? First and foremost, we say that we ought to
increase the contribution to the fund by 1 percent. Now, 1 percent may
not seem like a lot; but, when you have the whole country contributing,
in fact, it is. Even at that 1 percent level, though, we believe that,
especially in dealing with the times in which we are today, we ought to
phase that in over a 25-year period.

What does that mean? What that means is that, for a worker who is
making $50,000 a year, for 50 cents a week, as part of his or her
contribution, they get the most valuable governmental program in the
history of this Nation, the program that keeps people out of poverty,
the program that for more than two-thirds of them is the only
retirement vehicle that they will have, the program that is also there
in disability and for survivors' benefits.

We have so many Members in this body who can tell their stories about
how they would not have made it without Social Security. Both the
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Paul Ryan, and probably one
of the foremost authorities on the issue, Richard Neal of
Massachusetts, benefited from Social Security. It made it possible for
their mothers to help them and their families into college and beyond,
and look how successful both of them have been.

This is America's story. This is about America coming together, and
that is why it is around modest, pragmatic, straightforward proposals
that don't shy away from the cost but address it head on, that address
it head on in a simple, pragmatic, commonsense manner.

These aren't taxes. These are contributions that people are making
and that they are receiving a direct benefit from. It is unique amongst
all of the programs that we have.

Along with the 1 percent increase phased in over 25 years, which
amounts to .05 percent, or 50 cents a week for someone earning $50,000
or more--less if you are earning less and a little bit more if you are
earning more--we are also asking the top .4 percent to pay the same
rate as everyone else.

As you may know, Social Security is taxed currently only up to
$118,000. After that, people stop paying into the system. What we are
saying is: listen, the country is going through some difficult times.

People, especially those who work hard and play by the rules--the
working class, the middle class, who are suffering under this--we ought
to give them a little bit of a break.

Not until $400,000 do we start taxing Social Security again--excuse
me--asking those who are paying into the system to pay the same rate as
everybody else at that level. Only .4 percent, we ask to pay to make
this fund solvent, in conjunction with raising the percentage by 1
percent, for the next 75 years and beyond.

We keep Social Security strong for generations to come, and that is
why this is such a vital and important benefit for this great Nation of
ours.

At the end of the day, what has made our country great, going back to
those first settlers who all gathered together to help one another
raise their homes and their barns and plow and sow and reap the
benefits of their fields, Americans have rallied to come together,
rallied with one another from the time the Thirteen Colonies formed the
Union to today of our 50 States. Our States are unique, our States all
have special qualities, but the one quality that we all share is that
we are Americans.

Social Security is America's program. It is what Roosevelt
recognized, as did the Congresses back then, the importance of dealing
in our system of entrepreneurialism and capitalism and risk taking,
that that gives us an unbelievable strength in a global and world
economy, but it has to be balanced off with the value and the notion
that if you work hard and play by the rules that your Nation is there
for you as well, and that you can't retire into poverty after working
all your life, that some calamity or misfortune, a disability, a tragic
death can't ruin you or your family because it is part of a larger
family, the United States of America.

God bless you. God bless America. Thank you for listening to this
presentation.

We have 56 original cosponsors of this bill, and we know all across
this country, the more that we talk about this straightforward,
commonsense, practical solution to Social Security, Americans are going
to require that Congress steps up to the plate and meets its
responsibility and obligation to make sure that no senior, no
individual can retire into poverty, and the system that has worked so
extraordinarily well for every American is there not only today and
tomorrow, but well into the future without raising the national debt
and only calling upon Americans to do what they have done
traditionally: contribute to a program that guarantees a secure
retirement and pension and benefits that they will reap throughout a
lifetime.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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