Ed Royce: “the Social Security earnings limit is a very outdated provision in the Tax Code. In fact, it goes back to the Great…”

“the Social Security earnings limit is a very outdated provision in the Tax Code. In fact, it goes back to the Great Depression. It was designed at that time to open up more jobs for young people during the Great Depression. The idea was that this would force seniors out of the workforce by putting this special earnings limit on them. But today in this era of low unemployment and in this era of much longer life spans, seniors should be welcome to stay in America's workforce. What we did today in this House is to pass a bill that repeals this penalty on senior citizens who make the choice to continue to work. This was long overdue. Our seniors have worked their entire lives to build our country into what it is today. It is wrong for the Government to force them to choose between contributing to society or receiving their full Social Security checks. In my home State of California alone, there are more than 161,000 seniors affected by the Social Security earnings test that were penalized by that test. If this legislation is passed by the Senate and signed into law, that means all these Californians over the age of 64 will be able to continue adding to our economic productivity while keeping all of their Social Security. These are individuals who paid into Social Security on the assurance that their money would be there when they retired. The idea that the Federal Government can withhold access to their money, frankly, is outrageous.”