Political Quotes

“Yesterday the President's Social Security commission met for the first time. Last night I stayed up quite late listening to, 10 or 12 of those commission members talk and speak about what they saw as their challenge to try to fix the Social Security problem. I was disappointed, number one, that some of the commissioners apparently were not in attendance; number two, I was disappointed that some of the commissioners appeared not to understand the complexity of the problem facing Social Security and, therefore, facing America. Social Security is probably one of our most successful programs to help retirees. We are faced with the challenge of keeping Social Security solvent. What I would like to stress is what I displayed on this first chart, and that is the biggest risk is doing nothing at all. Some of the commissioners I heard suggested the dangers of investing and do not risk Social Security. The problem is that if we do not do something, then we are going to end up increasing payroll taxes and probably also reducing benefits. The challenge is ahead of us. Social Security has a total unfunded liability of over $9 trillion. That means we would have to put $9 trillion today in an investment account, earning at least 2.7 percent interest to accommodate future payments in Social Security. The Social Security Trust Fund contains nothing but IOUs.”