All Quotes

The indiscriminate budget cuts of sequestration would result in the loss of a deployable aircraft carrier.

The chances of these girls being reunited with their families grows ever dimmer.

I really am sympathetic to your budget constraints and the number of employees that you have lost...

I really commend you for that. Aroostook County is a very large, very rural area, and we have a lot of seniors who are homebound or cannot travel long distances, and the fact that you are making such an effort to get services to them is…

I mean that sincerely.

$4 million for one Social Security office?

I do not see where you are really going to save on staff and be able to give the kind of service that Ms. DeLong is giving.

I use it in my office to meet with constituents who cannot travel to one of my six offices in Maine or cannot travel at all.

It is hard to understand why those particular offices would be closed.

In your opinion, was SSA just determined to shut the office no matter what?

Did the Social Security Administration officials give any specific reasons why they could not accept some of those offers so that it could maintain the office at a reduced cost?

That also worries me. We have seen a little bit in the VA scandal of a variation of that that led in some cases to a falsification of numbers.

What a huge difference in her standard of living to have $1,400 a month rather than $434 a month.

I think that is just such a perfect example of why the face-to-face encounter is so important.

I am also, like the Chairman, concerned by the lack of transparency in the Social Security Administration's process for closing field offices or reducing their hours.

This is completely unrealistic. The fact of the matter is millions of seniors and disabled Americans are not accustomed to doing business online.

I applaud your holding this hearing on a topic of great concern to all of us, and that is, the impact on the beneficiaries of Social Security of the Social Security Administration's reduction of person-to-person services.

Opening Statement of Senator Susan M. Collins, Ranking Member