Marshall Sanford: “So some of these looks at fixing the problem may fix the trust fund but make it so that somebody has to live 150 years…”

“So some of these looks at fixing the problem may fix the trust fund but make it so that somebody has to live 150 years to get their return. That is not the promise of Social Security. What I am hearing from constituents back home is Social Security taxes are the largest tax 73 percent of Americans make. Consequently what they are telling me is for me, it is the largest investment I will make. Therefore, you need to make this stuff count. Because some people say, you need to focus on additional savings outside of the roughly 10 percent of what you earn every day, every week and every month on Social Security. You need to make additional savings. They are saying, ``Mark, you can only squeeze but so much blood from a turnip. I am struggling between gas money, rent money, food money, education money. I don't have any other savings. Therefore, I've got to make Social Security count.'' So we have got to stay focused not on actuarial balance but on the promise of Social Security which is to make sure it is not a system that guarantees somebody a negative rate of return or a 1 percent rate of return but something higher than that.”