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The revenue stream for Social Security benefits comes from payroll taxes, which are credited to the Social Security Trust Fund - accounting for the program's finances separately from the rest of the budget.
The Republican promise is for policies that create economic growth. Republicans believe lower taxes, less regulation, balanced budgets, a solvent Social Security and Medicare will stimulate economic growth.
Will some reporter, or some Republican on the Sunday shows, please ask why tax cuts raid the non-existent Social Security Trust Fund but all the Democrats' new spending doesn't? Will someone please ask that?
Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff.
Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them - take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.
Student loans, Social Security, and Medicare make a difference in the lives of working families every day, and the conversation that should be taking place is how we can save these programs, not weaken them.
Through good times and bad, American workers and their families have been able to rely on Social Security to provide guaranteed protection against the loss of earnings due to retirement, disability, or death.
While more people are working later in life because of happy things like longer life expectancy, they are also doing so because of very sad things, like a lack of Social Security benefits or retirement plans.
There are many commitments I have made for reducing poverty. One is to reform social security. Social security reaches only 44 percent of Mexicans. One of my goals is to give social security to all the people.
Why shouldn't future generations and young Americans have the choice to earn a higher rate of return? Why shouldn't they be able to own their own Social Security so that Congress can't spend it on other things?
Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'
Social Security Number Cards by themselves were never intended to be personal identity documents because they cannot confirm that a person presenting a card is actually the person whose name appears on the card.
We're going to lose Social Security and Medicare if Republicans and Democrats do not come together and find a solution like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. I will be the Ronald Reagan if I can find a Tip O'Neill.
From the employees' standpoint, in 1935, Social Security was a big gamble. Employees would be required to participate in the program, contributing a percentage of their income for their entire adult working life.
The President's budget pays for only six months of the war in Iraq and completely overlooks the transition costs of Social Security reform. The Administration always lied about the cost of the Medicare drug bill.
Funding privatized accounts with Social Security dollars would not only make the program's long term problems worse, but many believe it represents a first step toward undermining the program's fundamental goals.
We seek to protect and preserve life for life's own sake in everything from our most fundamental laws of homicide to our road traffic regulations to our largest governmental programs for health and social security.
We must level with the people and explain to them that Social Security will first face funding problems in 2042 that can be fixed now with changes that do not undermine and ultimately drain from the entire program.
The President and I agree that Social Security needs to be preserved so that we can ensure that all Americans receive the retirement benefits they've been promised. But we disagree as to how best to fix the system.
President Roosevelt, the author of Social Security, was the first to suggest that, in order to provide for the country's retirement needs, Social Security would need to be supplemented by personal savings accounts.
And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with a subsidy as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.
A lifetime single worker really gets a horrid deal from Social Security. The return on average is less than 0.5 percent. These workers would be nearly better off stuffing their payroll tax dollars under a mattress.
F.D.R. had an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in 1933 when he drove 15 major bills through the Congress, and super majorities in the House and the Senate in 1935 when he won passage of Social Security.
I do not believe that the Social Security system is in crisis. The Social Security Administration itself recently reported that the system is able to pay full benefits as they are defined today until at least 2042.
We're taking on Social Security as a property rights issue. We figure that every single American has an absolute property right interest in the fruits of his or her own labor. What I work for should be my property.
Mr. Speaker, Americans want, need, and rightfully expect Congress to protect them from the prying eyes of identity thieves and give them back control of their Social Security numbers and personal health information.
Since Social Security faces a large gap between what it promises younger workers and what it can afford to pay them, private savings will likely need to play a larger role in retirement planning for younger workers.
I believe that we should allow younger workers to contribute toward a personal account that they own, as long as it is coupled with deficit reduction measures that enhance the long-term condition of Social Security.
But it's a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of 'social security'.
Maybe you're not going to be able to pass sweeping health care reform in your first year in Congress. But you can help someone with a social security settlement that's going to change their life... That's pretty cool.
You know, we've got to be responsible about our debt. We don't want the United States to ever be a dead beat, and not be able to pay its bills, either to our soldiers who are fighting or to Social Security recipients.
Because Social Security is specifically designed to boost the retirement income of low earners with a progressive benefit formula, the program has played an enormous and necessary role in keeping Latinas out of poverty.
Drawing on President Bush's reform plan, which would allow citizens to transfer part of their Social Security contributions into personal accounts, an alteration of the current system is needed to make necessary change.
I am just one of the overwhelming majority of Americans who is responsible and hard-working and at one point in their life benefited greatly from government programs such as student loans, Medicare, and Social Security.
Knowledge is power. Most of us agree that something has to be done to strengthen Social Security, and I believe it's irresponsible to arbitrarily dismiss any idea, Republican nor Democrat, without giving it a hard look.
I have the highest number of Social Security recipients of any Member of Congress, and it is always good to hear about how women in their districts are affected by any changes, by the need for changes in Social Security.
We should make it as easy as possible to be able to get a legal work visa - not citizenship, not a green card. Just a work visa, with a background check and a Social Security card so that applicable taxes would get paid.
The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern.
The reason to deal with Social Security is that it is a system where we have a tradition and history of making sure it is solidly funded for 75 years. At the moment, we look out and we see it is solidly funded until 2037.
And it's also producing a growth in debt to the United States that will weight very heavily in a country that has to address issues like having more old people to be covered by Social Security or by pension in the future.
If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.
We must work to stabilize Social Security. We must not gamble with our nation's social insurance program, one of our most popular and effective federal programs that has remained dependable and stable for the past 70 years.
As pressure grows to ease the financial burden on social security, pressure will also grow to eliminate the elderly and infirm to 'free up' more money for the 'fit' and those who contribute more than they take from society.
Our country also hungers for leadership to ensure the long-term survival of our Social Security system. With 70 million baby boomers in this country on the verge of retirement, we need to take action to shore up the system.
Social Security got passed because John D. Rockefeller was sick of having to take money out of his profits to pay for his workers' pension funds. Why do that, when you can just let the government take money from the workers?
There are very powerful and wealthy special interests who want to privatize or dismember virtually every function that government now performs, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, public education or the Postal Service.
Our nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve.
We need to build on the success of Social Security by developing bold and innovative ways for Americans to build wealth and save for retirement. I believe we can work together in a bipartisan manner to accomplish these goals.
As you know, Social Security functions under the premise that today's workers will help finance benefits for retirees and that these workers will then be supported by the next generation of workers paying into the same system.
If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.