Political Quotes

“Mr. President, yesterday the Budget Committee, of which I am the ranking member, held a very important hearing on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, which is a life-and-death program for nearly 11 million Americans, including more than 1 million veterans and almost 2 million children who rely on this program to get the nutrition they need, to heat their homes, and to pay for their medicine. This is a program that impacts some of the most vulnerable people in this country. Let me be very clear in describing this program. This is a program American workers have paid into. It is an insurance program. This is not charity. When Americans pay 6.2 percent of their income in payroll tax, almost 1 percent of that amount goes into the disability insurance program. The average disability insurance benefit is less than $1,200 a month, and for 30 percent of beneficiaries this is all of the income they have--$1,200 a month, 30 percent of the beneficiaries of SSDI. For them this is all of their income. Nobody is getting rich off of disability benefits. Sadly, on the very first day of the new Congress, House Republicans passed a rule that would lay the groundwork for a 19-percent cut in Social Security disability insurance benefits.…”