Kendrick Meek: “If the $2 trillion number is not right, because as my colleagues know, under this Medicare prescription drug benefit…”

“If the $2 trillion number is not right, because as my colleagues know, under this Medicare prescription drug benefit that the administration put forth in the last Congress, we were told one number and that was wrong, and then it was revealed that the numbers were suppressed and the actual number is higher. Just today, looking at the news reports, that number is even higher, and so as these mistakes are made, future generations and even the present generation is put at risk financially. I can tell my colleagues one thing that is fact. We do know who will benefit from this privatization scheme, which is $940 billion, Wall Street, to put these public dollars in open water, to gamble. The other issue that I thought the gentleman really laid out was the fact there are no guarantees that the benefit level will stay where it is now. Matter of fact, we are pretty much guaranteed that benefits will be cut, even for those who do not take part in the privatization accounts, and so I think it is important for us to continue to share that with the American people. Once again, I just want to say that Social Security is going to be solvent for another 47 years; and also, we have 48 million Americans that are now recipients of Social Security, and it has a lot to do with local economies, a lot of our disabled and very frail individuals.”