Political Quotes

“there are a couple of concerns that I have about this legislation: One, it does mean absolutely that we are going to raid the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund lockbox next year. So that is a real concern. Regardless of the kind of scoring, it is going to take the $15 billion coming from someplace. And so that is real money and that comes out of the surplus because it is dollars that are going to be given to this fund. My second concern is that eventually, sometime, someplace, somewhere down the road we take the American taxpayer off the hook and say, Look, you're not going to be responsible for this private pension plan anymore. It dates back to 1934 when we started Social Security. At that time railroaders were put under the Social Security Act. Railroaders had already started a pretty good pension forum, and so they came to Congress with significant political influence, as they have today. They came to Congress and said, Look, we want you to allow us to have the equivalent of a Social Security deduction on our payroll, but we want to go into our own private account. So by 1937, the Congress changed the law and allowed them to have this sort of quasi-governmental retirement system.”