Social Security Quotes

My 80-year-old mother will not buy her heart medicine because it cost more than she can pay with social security. She is America. ~ Jack Bowman

Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits are unacceptable, and they shouldn't be put on the table by Democrats for any reason. ~ Russ Feingold

I think changing the Democratic Party platform [at the convention] is a great place to start. It should include expanding Social Security, a $15 minimum wage, and breaking up too-big-to-fail banks on Wall Street - among other Sanders priorities. ~ Ben Wikler

The administration in my view is once again manufacturing a crisis. There is no crisis in the Social Security system. The system is not on the verge of bankruptcy. ~ Paul Sarbanes

I don't think Donald Trump is a conservative. I think his line on China for example, that he's going to talk tough to China. China didn't create Social Security, Medicare. China isn't spending a fifth of a billion dollars every hour that it doesn't have. ~ Mark Steyn

Carli Fiorina thinks the answer for Social Security and Medicare is ... zero-based budgeting! Christ. People of a certain age are all banging their heads on the table right now. ~ Ted Cruz

One of the reasons that Social Security is in so much trouble is that the only funding stream comes from people who get a wage. The people who get wages is declining dramatically. Most of the income in this country is made by people at the top who get dividends and - and capital gains. ~ Mike Huckabee

I agree that we must expand opportunities for retirement saving, but we must not undermine this worthy effort with a flawed privatization scheme that takes the 'security' out of Social Security. ~ Mary Landrieu

Even people who feel perfectly comfortable investing in the stock market and owning their own homes often have qualms about individual medical accounts or Social Security private accounts. ~ Jacob Hacker

Research by James Poterba at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that the wealth of the U.S.'s elderly is highly skewed. About half of retirees have little or no financial wealth when they retire and depend almost entirely on Social Security for their income. ~ Greg Ip

Counting obligations under Medicare and Social Security, the real debt of the United States is more than 10 times the reported national debt. ~ Addison Wiggin

Meanwhile, the reality is that living longer in our ever-more-unequal society is very much a class thing: life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot among the affluent, but hardly at all in the bottom half of the wage distribution, that is, among those who need Social Security most. ~ Anonymous

What we need is to make our senior citizens feel secure once more with their own Social Security and Medicare. But going forward, we need to personalize that program in a way that the government can't go in and raid it any more. ~ Sharron Angle

I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair. ~ Erma Bombeck

Privatizing Social Security doesn't make sense, and it's out of step with the fundamental value of ensuring that after a life spent working hard and contributing to the greatness of our nation, every American should have a secure retirement. ~ Debbie Stabenow

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. ~ Maria Semple

I believe Social Security is unjust. I think it's wrong. I think it penalizes responsible people. It penalizes the young and it's a massive redistribution of wealth. ~ Yaron Brook

You can be sure that I will always consider how changes to Social Security will impact people with disabilities when considering the various proposals offered for reform. ~ Steve Israel

It will take hard work, but doing nothing on Social Security, for example, simply makes sure the system will go broke. It's time to make some reforms. ~ Joni Ernst

You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career ... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. ~ Lloyd Blankfein

When I look at Social Security, I consider it the most important social program in the United States, arguably the most successful program in the world. ~ James A. Leach

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. ~ Robert Reich

I mean can you walk to school on your own? Can you study science? Can you study math? Can you go to a normal school? Do you need to go to a special school? What is going to become of you when you grow up? Are you going to have to live on social security and SSI? ~ Sheena Iyengar

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? ~ Ken Mehlman

Social Security is a program that should be strengthened and preserved for future generations. ~ Diane Watson

I'd love to see a new form of social security ... everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled. ~ Jackie French

For while white conservatives use government assistance copiously--whether it be Social Security, or mortgage tax relief, low-interest federal college loans or Medicare--in their political discussions they tend to define their benefits as not being "welfare," in contrast to the somehow less noble assistance provided to their black and brown neighbors. ~ Sasha Abramsky

They're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

More young people believe they'll see a U.F.O. than that they'll see their own Social Security benefits. ~ Mitch McConnell

If social security depresses savings rates, it is only because it is unfunded. ~ Robert Kuttner

The President's policy proposal, known as 'chained CPI,' would re-calculate the cost of living for Social Security beneficiaries. That new number won't keep up with inflation on things like food and health care
the basics that we need to live. In short, 'chained CPI' is just a fancy way to say 'cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans.' ~ Elizabeth Warren

The debate over Social Security should not be about how much we can cut from the program in order to balance the federal budget. The debate over Social Security should not be about raising the retirement age or limiting benefits. The debate over Social Security should be about retirement security. ~ Sherrod Brown

We all know that Social Security is one of this country's greatest success stories in the 20th century. ~ Mitch McConnell

Social Security is not in crisis. It's a crisis the president's created, period. ~ Harry Reid

Social Security is meant to be - to make sure that no one who's worked hard and played by the rules and paid into the system grows old in poverty in America. ~ Chris Christie

Social Security is a tax. ~ Todd Akin

Medicare and Social Security have created the healthiest and most financially secure generation of senior citizens in American history. ~ Jim Walsh

The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion. ~ Rick Santorum

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double. ~ Chaka Fattah

Social Security Disability Plans: This segment of Social Security is different from the more common retirement benefit payout. Two programs are available: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Both programs have stringent eligibility requirements. ~ Michele Tagliati

What will we do in a globalised world? All human beings are equal, so they have the same right to have the same lifestyle-the same social security, jobs, education. ~ Joschka Fischer

Ollie was soon invited to attend public rallies and private meetings in which the crowd called for the expulsion of all foreigners from Sweden calling them parasites that sucked money and health benefits from the social security system. In fact, most of the protestors and demonstrators themselves lived on social security money while most of the immigrants were gainfully employed and paid their taxes regularly. But these facts were irrelevant since prejudice and xenophobia were dominant. ~ Charles Z. David

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. ~ Bernie Sanders

The process by which wants are now synthesized is a potential source of economic instability. Production and therewith employment and social security are dependent on an inherently unstable process of consumer debt creation. This may one day falter. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Our society has changed in unforeseeable ways since Social Security was created. For example, we are living longer, healthier, and more productive lives and while this is all great news, this has also placed added pressure on America's retirement system. ~ Norm Coleman

The security of computers and the Internet is a horrible and dangerous mess. Every week we hear about breaches of databases of Social Security numbers and financial information and health records, and about critical infrastructure being insecure. ~ Matt Blaze

You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security ... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things. ~ William J. Clinton

The real problem is that the financial base for our social security system is shrinking because the number of normal jobs is falling. In other words, we have to address the challenge of how to make employment, in the classic sense, attractive once again. ~ Angela Merkel

The alienation, the downright visceral frustration, of the new American ideologues, the bone in their craw, is the unacknowledged fact that America has never been an especially capitalist country. The postal system, the land grant provision for public education, the national park system, the Homestead Act, the graduated income tax, the Social Security system, the G.I. Bill
all of these were and are massive distributions or redistributions of wealth meant to benefit the population at large. ~ Marilynne Robinson

On issue after issue, the polls - and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time - show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. ~ Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Increasing the minimum wagewill put billions annually into the Social Security trust fund. ~ Bruce Braley

He couldn't work, as such, but needed to flex himself somehow in ways that felt like work, he thought. Lacking credentials and sight he could not teach, for example. Even reading a cold-call script would be out, although he'd heard of a resourceful blind man who went to the social security office and suggested, "Give me either a job or just my damned check," and received the former, skillfully handling mediation assignments. ~ Edward Hoagland

According to the American Lung Association, the average smoker dies seven years earlier than the average nonsmoker, which means that smokers pay into Social Security and private pension funds for all of their working lives but then don't stick around very long to collect the benefits. ~ Charles Wheelan

I think we should worry about Social Security first and then tax cuts second. ~ Bobby Scott

Social security was the most emotional issue that session. Republicans protested that if the administration bill were passed, children would no longer support their parents, the payroll tax would discourage workmen so much that they would quit their jobs, and that, taken all in all, the measure would remove the romance of life. ~ William Manchester

All of us who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate pay into Social Security. ~ Virgil Goode

Social Security is unsustainable because it is not meeting the first order condition of a Ponzi scheme, namely expanding the pool of suckers. ~ Walter E. Williams

Race to race, the Republicans are putting up candidates that are quite far out of the mainstream in terms of should we have passed the Civil Rights Act or does Social Security need to exist. ~ Tim Kaine

When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn't have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

All Americans have a sacred duty to guarantee Social Security benefits to our nation's senior citizens. ~ Steve King

All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus. ~ Walter E. Williams

You can give your Social Security check to any organization, public or private, or to individuals. You can donate it to your favorite political party. You can give the funds to a student scholarship - for your grandchildren, for example - or to somebody who has a medical need. Or you can invest your government check in free enterprise. ~ Mark Skousen

We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and never allow the President and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block. ~ John F. Kerry

Of course, I have a different vested interest in the gay community, because I am gay, and I would certainly enjoy the tax advantages that straight people have, and the inheritance advantages, and things like Social Security, but I've always been a civil rights advocate across the board. That's how I was raised. ~ Janis Ian

What I think people should realize is that programs like Social Security, programs like Medicare, programs like the Veterans Administration, programs like your local park and your local library - those are, if you like, socialist programs; they're run by [and] for the public, not to make money. I think in many ways we should expand that concept so that the American people can enjoy the same benefits that people all over the world are currently enjoying. ~ Bernie Sanders

When someone has your clinical information, your bank account information, and your Social Security number, they can commit fraud that lasts a long time," Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, told Monitor correspondent Jaikumar Vijayan in March after the Premera Blue Cross breach. "The kind of identity theft that is on the table here is qualitatively and quantitatively different than what is typically possible when you lose your credit card or Social Security number. ~ Anonymous

We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized. ~ Sharron Angle

Nobody in this country is on Social Security because they made the decision when they were starting work at 14 that they wanted to trust some of their money with the government. The government took it out of their check whether they wanted them to or not. ~ Mike Huckabee

When you pay social security taxes, you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those who are already retired. Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire depends on whether Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money ... ~ W. Allen Wallis

Social Security has been effective for 70 years; prior predictions of its demise have been totally overstated. ~ Grace Napolitano

Social Security is a solemn promise to kupuna like my 88-year-old mother that they can rely on the retirement they've earned. While I'm glad to see our seniors receive an increase for the second year in a row, I wish the cost-of-living adjustment could be larger. However, every little bit helps make a difference in these tough economic times. ~ Mazie Hirono

Social Security is one of the greatest achievements of the American government, protecting our elderly against poverty and assuring young people of a more secure future. ~ Mark Foley

One poll shows that by 61 percent to 29 percent Americans under 40 say that Social Security needs to be fixed. ~ Virginia Foxx

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. ~ Luis Gutierrez

Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes.

Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all-- ~ Bart D. Ehrman

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. ~ Cal Thomas

Our long-postponed day of financial reckoning appears finally to be at hand, and it may well turn out to be something we should not wish away. When ordinary people are brought to understand that the state is unable to ensure their material well-being, children will again be perceived as long term assets: necessary replacements for the Social Security swindle and state-seized or inflation eroded private pension funds rather than obstacles to greater consumption. Amid the collapse of political finance, we may be able to regain a sense of the timeless purpose of labor and wealth. Our children may learn to find the satisfaction in the simple daily fact of family survival that we were unable to find in all our economic overreaching. ~ F. Roger Devlin

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program. ~ George W. Bush

I believe that as a nation we must have a bipartisan discussion about how to best preserve and protect Social Security for our seniors and for future generations of Americans. ~ Steve Israel

Our fiat currency is under increasing stress with our large and growing trade deficits. We have a federal deficit that is calculated in the trillions when we take into account the net present value of the future Social Security and Medicaid obligations we are creating today. ~ George Noory

Mark my words, there will be an intensive effort to privatize Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. ~ Bernie Sanders

Today, I'm 60, I'm not married, I don't have any kids. I would give up some Social Security to save a system that Americans are going to depend on now and in the future. ~ Lindsey Graham

I'm gonna keep Social Security without change, except I'm going to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse; same thing with Medicare. ~ Donald Trump

Social Security is at last on the nation's front burner. ~ Nick Clooney

Corporations are reneging on pension obligations. Social Security is under attack. ~ Dennis Kucinich

With or without a Social Security fix, Americans don't have enough assets to retire on. There has to be a much larger debate. ~ Frank Keating

The rate of return on Social Security for people nearing retirement is about 1.5 percent. By the time young children like mine are ready to retire, that rate of return will be a negative percentage. ~ Paul Ryan

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your f**kin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. ~ George Carlin

While the feds ... leave Social Security off their books, the government's obligation to make benefit payments to current and near-term Social Security recipients is certainly no less real than its obligation to pay interest on its Treasury bonds. ~ Laurence Kotlikoff

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. ~ Amir Butler

The privatization plan weakens Social Security and threatens our economic security by creating trillions of dollars in new debt. ~ Ruben Hinojosa

Women would be disproportionately affected by the privatization of social security. It is one of the most important safety nets for American women in old age, or in times of disability, to insure financial income for their families. ~ Barbara Mikulski

The American people I talk to don't spend every moment thinking, 'How can I tax my neighbor more than they're being taxed?' They say, 'How can I get a good job? How can my kids get good jobs? How can seniors have a confidence in their future when they know that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt?' ~ Mitt Romney

I don't know whether other people should or shouldn't pay taxes. I know I can, and I am willing, to pay more taxes. I know I should not get Social Security. I don't need it. ~ Kenneth Langone

In fact, you don't have a soul, you are your own soul. In other words, you are not this book, your social security card, your body or your mind. You are you. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Health care is a far more serious, immediate and destructive problem than social security ... The upfront investment needed to fund system wide [health care] reform ... would be far offset by the savings. ~ Henry Simmons

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too. ~ Mark Dayton

No matter what federal program one selects - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug war, the income tax and the IRS, education, foreign interventions and wars - they are all a giant mess. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

We need to expand Social Security to prevent the looming retirement crisis, and we can do it simply by asking billionaires to pay their fair share. ~ Robert Reich

If you are wealthy enough, use part or all of your Social Security proceeds to invest in a favorite cause or two. Invest 10 percent or 100 percent of your monthly Social Security check in your favorite charity, foundation, think tank, church or synagogue, or other good cause. ~ Mark Skousen