Bud Shuster: “I will close by making the final note, again, the urging, the plea to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to…”

“I will close by making the final note, again, the urging, the plea to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to stop using the rhetoric that those of us on our side want to privatize. We do not want to privatize Social Security. We want to find reforms to make sense. We want to find reforms that are going to strengthen Social Security and not just for those today, but, most importantly, those that are going to retire in 20, 30 years from now. Because if we in this Congress do nothing, then we are going to continue to see Social Security going in the wrong direction and nobody in this country wants to see the Social Security system continue to go down, having less money, moving towards insolvency. So we have got to do something. I say, let's look at the railroad retirement fund that has returned $7.9 billion to its retirees and has grown 16 percent in the last 7 years, despite payouts, volatility in the markets, in the global economy. This is a system that, again, 7 years ago, we have taken a small portion of it and invested it in U.S. and global equity markets, fixed income, real estate, commodities, not the entire amount, but a portion of it. Our railroad retirees are benefiting greatly by that. I stand here today in support of this resolution.”