Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am here to join the chorus for providing some additional help to our seniors on Social Security. What can I say? Here we go again. In 2010 and in 2011, America's seniors were told by the Social Security Administration there would be no cost- of-living adjustment, no increase for them, and now it is happening a third time. We all know that the price of the things seniors actually buy has continued to go up, and yet no COLA. In 2010 and 2011 we tried to remedy that with Senator Sanders' Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act. We did not succeed. There was opposition from the other side. We did succeed at getting a one-time $300 payment to seniors under the Economic Stimulus Act in 2008, back in the depths of the great Wall Street recession, and another $250 under the Recovery Act. So we have done this before, and it has helped. I strongly encourage that we do it. There is a flaw built into the Social Security COLA, which is that the CPI measures things that a lot of seniors don't buy. It measures laptops, it measures flat screens, and it measures a lot of technology, but seniors in Rhode Island who make a little over $1,200 from Social Security on average aren't buying a lot of flat screen TVs and they are not buying a lot of laptops. What they are buying is fuel, medicines, food, and maybe something for the grandchildren at Christmastime, and all of that keeps going up. We should fix that formula.…”