Matt Cartwright: “Ranking Member Larson has that right, and I thank the gentleman for answering my questions. Tonight, I am here to speak…”

“Ranking Member Larson has that right, and I thank the gentleman for answering my questions. Tonight, I am here to speak on behalf of 191,000 people from northeastern Pennsylvania who depend on Social Security checks coming in to keep them alive. Probably over 40 percent of them look to those checks as the only visible means of support that they have. Now, the Republican Study Committee's fiscal year 2025 proposal comes along and talks about raising the retirement age to 69. That is fine if, like us, you fly a desk for a living, but if you do what so many Americans do, the people who paid paycheck after paycheck after paycheck into this sacred promise, this insurance program, FICA, if you do what they do--they have to lift and climb and carry and dig. These are the people doing manual labor, and they are expected to work well into their senior years, according to the Republican Study Committee. Mr. Speaker, this is a breach of a promise. It is a betrayal of the Americans who paid into this system their entire working lives. It is unacceptable, and it is something that the Republicans have done year in and year out. Remember when, in 2006, Republicans were proposing privatizing the entire Social Security system, saying that will free up people to invest their money in the stock market. Then what happened to the stock market a couple of years later? It cratered.…”