Xavier Becerra: “I rise in strong support of improving Social Security benefits for women, all women in this country. That is one of the…”

“I rise in strong support of improving Social Security benefits for women, all women in this country. That is one of the reasons why I support the legislation today of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw). But we should be clear, this modest improvement in Social Security benefits for women should be considered nothing more than a downpayment of what we must do to help women who for years have worked very hard in and out of the home, in and out of the office, in and out of all of the workplaces of America, the chance to receive their fair share of retirement security. Mr. Speaker, four out of every 10 women who are retired today rely on Social Security for 90 percent of all of their income. And 75 percent of all women rely on Social Security for half of all of their income. Clearly Social Security is extremely important for women, more so than it is for men. While we have done a tremendous job of decreasing poverty among our elderly, over the last 30 years or so we have seen a decrease of some 29 percent of poverty within the senior ranks in our country to something around 8.5 percent today of our seniors in poverty. When we look at widows, we find that their poverty rates are twice as much for the average senior in this country. We must do more.”