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Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. And I just want him to know how much I have appreciated working with him.
This is an issue we simply disagree on. And that happens. People have differences of opinion.
The Social Security crisis is a freight train barreling toward our Nation. Social Security will be depleted before the end of the next Presidential administration.
The resolution on offer now claims to be a quick solution to addressing the crisis. Instead, the resolution creates a fast track for Republicans to carry out a long-sought goal of slashing Social Security benefits for retirees and helping billionaires avoid paying their fair share. Each time Republicans get their hands on Social Security, it seems that cuts get made and life gets worse for seniors. Establishing this commission would be a fast track to cutting benefits.
The proposal on offer is a Senate-only process. Under the Constitution, bills raising taxes must originate in the House of Representatives. Because of this constitutional requirement, any Senate-only process, like the Cassidy proposal, could not include a tax increase. This means, under the Cassidy proposal, billionaires could not be required to contribute. We couldn't increase the payroll tax cap or include any other revenue increase. It would mean that the entire burden of Social Security solvency would fall on the backs of retirees and the disabled through benefit cuts. That is not a fair solution for the vast majority of Americans.
Here is the bottom line. Since my days as codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, I have a long record of working on a bipartisan basis to fix this problem and protect retired people from missing out on their hard-earned benefits. We can do that by updating Social Security to reflect the economy of America today, by ensuring that billionaires pay into Social Security with each paycheck, like teachers, nurses, and firefighters.
Supporting a scheme like this--a fast track to rip away Americans' hard-earned benefits while shutting them out of the debate--is just plain wrong in my judgment.
If Republicans had any real interest in wanting to shore up Social Security, they would be putting forth their own ideas and working with Democrats to protect the program rather than to undermine it. Democrats have several concrete proposals to protect and strengthen Americans' earned benefits without raising the retirement age, cost-of-living haircuts, or means-testing benefits. It all starts by finally requiring billionaires to pay what they owe, just like the rest of us.
Billionaire wealth has skyrocketed to over $9 trillion this year while working people struggle to scrape enough money together to pay for rent, gas, and groceries. This proposal, in my view, is effectively a wolf in sheep's clothing. It does nothing to protect Social Security and, instead, hands Republicans the key to the castle to start their work of ripping away Americans' hard-earned benefits.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, just to respond just for a brief minute. You can't originate taxes in the Senate. So what that means is this proposal gives the billionaires a free ride.
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