Political Quotes

“I chaired the bipartisan Social Security Task Force, and we talked about this so-called totalization, which is pretty much a reciprocal effort between countries to earn and get payments for retirement benefits, for three reasons. One is the oversight of Congress would result in maybe 60 days delay, but not a real opportunity to turn this around. I support the amendment, but because I think we need sort of a cooling off period of at least a year to look at the consequences, a couple of consequences. One is the solvency of Social Security. So as we look at the potential cost to Social Security, the actuaries are already estimating that Social Security is going to be insolvent by 2018, this provision lowers the date of insolvency because of the cost. Let me just quote what the Social Security Administration estimates. Number 1, it is going to cost approximately $105 million per year over the first 5 years, like the chairman suggested; but, further, the GAO found that a lack of consideration to the estimated millions of current and former unauthorized workers and family members from Mexico who are already residing in the United States who could qualify under various amnesty and guest worker proposals make the cost of such an agreement highly uncertain and could have a measurable impact on the long-range actuarial balance of the trust fund.”