It is my sacred duty as an elected official to protect the Social Security Trust Fund.
SOCIAL SECURITY + A Sacred Trust
It is my sacred duty as an elected official to protect the Social Security Trust Fund. As your Congressman, I will never vote for legislation that cuts benefits from the checks of current retirees. Additionally, the worst thing that could happen to our economy is defaulting on the Social Security Trust Fund. Yet if we continue down this path of creating the largest budget deficit in American history, raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, and misplacing our priorities, we are destined to bankrupt Social Security. It will take discipline and to restore fiscal sanity in Washington and I intend to vote accordingly.
I supported the lockbox concept, a plan to set aside the money for Social Security. Instead of a bipartisan lockbox to protect Social Security surpluses, $1.5 trillion has been used to pay for the excesses of the tax cut and other spending. It has put our financial house on shaky ground and we have ended up with the largest deficit in American history.
There has been very little truth in advertising on this issue in the last four years. Because the money is gone, Republicans argue that we need to cut spending. But they use a catchier term + "starve the beast" + that is really a code word for cutting Social Security benefits and other entitlements. As a result, this Administration and its supporters promote "privatization." Social Security was never intended and should not be an investment program. Instead, it is a contributory insurance program, containing four insurance policies, designed to protect workers and their families from loss of income due to death, disability or retirement. In all of the privatization arguments, the Republicans claim you can make a better return on your investment. But they fail to mention that you can lose everything as well. Insurance is not an investment. That is false advertising and it needs to stop.
The Administration and its supporters have tried a number of "trial balloons" in the last few years. Threats to raise taxes, lifting the retirement age, and the notion that deficits don't matter + we can just keep on borrowing - are no solution at all. The fact is they have no real plan to save Social Security. Too much of the debate revolves around positions that won't put us back on the track to fiscal discipline.
As Jane Bryant Quinn recently noted in Newsweek, "If the tax cuts were pared by a third and those revenues dedicated to Social Security, the crisis disappears." If we take steps now to improve Social Security through fiscal discipline, American seniors and all Americans will not have to live under the cloud of fear that has been created in the last three years. With these steps, the cloud will be lifted and the financial freedom and security to live during their golden years.
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