Political Quotes

“I want to talk straightforwardly about what I think is one of the greatest problems facing this country, and that is the fact that Social Security is going broke. Mr. Speaker, we are now looking at a situation where there is going to be less money coming in from the taxes charged to workers than the amount of the dollars going out in benefit payments. When we started this program in 1935, it was started as a pay-as-you-go program that cannot be sustained. It was started as a program charging workers a 1-percent tax, and then paying a very meager, a very small benefit to retirees once they reached the age of 65. However, most retirees at that time did not reach the age of 65. The average age of death in 1935 was 61 years old. That meant that most people never got any Social Security benefits, but simply paid into it. We have now developed, with this pay-as-you-go problem, where we have constantly solved the shortage of funds to pay benefits by increasing taxes. So what we have done, since 1971, we have increased the taxes, Social Security taxes, on workers 36 times, more often than once a year. We are going to end up with generational warfare.”