Transportation, Housing And Urban Development, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to touch upon an issue I think has not gotten as much consideration in the Senate as it might; that is, for the first time since 1975, and in the midst of a major recession, senior citizens in our country who are on Social Security will not--unless we act--be receiving a cost-of-living adjustment this year.

Let me repeat that. For the first time since 1975, and while we are in the midst of a major economic recession which is causing havoc with the lives of all of our people, including senior citizens, this year--unless Congress acts--senior citizens will not be getting a cost-of-living adjustment.

Among other things, this would mean monthly Social Security payments would drop for millions of retirees because Medicare prescription drug premiums--the Medicare Part D Program--which are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to increase.

So what we are looking at is that not only will tens of millions of America's seniors not receive any increase in Social Security but many, in fact, will see a reduction because their Social Security checks will go to pay for an increase in Medicare Part D payments. I would suggest in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, we cannot allow that to happen.

Many senior citizens in this country have recently, within the last year or two, seen a significant decline in their savings because of the losses they incurred with the drop in the stock market. Many have seen their pensions disappear. Many have seen the value of their home dramatically diminish. All of this is taking place at a time while poverty among senior citizens is going up. And the number of seniors who are declaring bankruptcy is also increasing.

Most importantly, I think it is imperative that sooner than later we take a hard look to determine how COLAs for Social Security beneficiaries are, in fact, determined. Some years ago, when I was a Member of the House, I introduced legislation to establish a separate index for seniors because the simple reality is, it is wrong to include seniors in the overall index because their needs--how they spend their money--are often very different than how the rest of the population spends their money.

If you are a young person or a middle-aged person and you want to go out and buy a laptop computer today, for example, the odds are you are going to get a pretty good price on that computer, and the price of that computer will be substantially lower than it was a couple years ago. So for you, inflation for your expenditures on technology may well have gone down.

On the other hand, if you are a senior citizen, especially one who does not have a whole lot of money, how are you spending your money? Well, a very significant cost for seniors, obviously, is health care. For those needs Medicare does not cover, the truth is, health care costs, as we all know, are exploding. They are going up.

So if you are a senior, the odds are you are spending a lot more for health care out of your own pocket this year than you did last year. If you are a senior and you get caught in the doughnut hole of Medicare Part D, you are spending a lot of money because prescription drug costs, in many instances, are also going up.

So I think when we take a look at the COLA, we should understand the needs of somebody who is 75 or 80 years of age and how he or she spends their money, from an inflation perspective, is very different from somebody who is 18 years of age or maybe 40 years of age. But be that as it may, there can be no debate that millions of senior citizens today, in the midst of this recession, are hurting very badly. I think we would be doing a great disservice to them by turning our back on their needs and not making sure we are providing some financial support to them.

Therefore, I am asking my colleagues to join me in becoming an original cosponsor of the Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act, legislation I will be formally introducing on Thursday. Under this legislation, all Social Security recipients, railroad retirees, SSI beneficiaries, and adults receiving veterans benefits will receive a one-time additional check of $250 in 2010. Since seniors living on fixed incomes are most likely to spend this money--whether it is on health care, whether it is trying to keep warm this winter--this legislation would provide a boost to our economy as it emerges from the economic crisis.

I very much appreciate that my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, is an original cosponsor, and I hope within the next couple of days we can have more.

For more than three decades, seniors have relied on a cost-of-living adjustment in their Social Security benefits to keep up with their increased expenses. Unfortunately, the current formulation for determining Social Security COLAs, in my view, does not accurately take into account the purchasing needs of today's seniors who often do not buy items such as laptop computers and cellular phones but spend, as I mentioned a moment ago, a disproportionate percentage of their income on health care needs and prescription drugs.

The truth is, what we are proposing now is something very similar to what the Obama administration provided for in the stimulus package. This legislation we are offering is fully paid for by simply applying the Social Security payroll tax to household incomes above $250,000 and below $359,000 in 2010.

Under current law, only the first $106,000 of earned income is subject to the Social Security payroll tax, thus a worker earning $106,000 pays the same payroll tax as a CEO making $300 million. This legislation begins to correct this inequity in 2010, while making sure seniors receive a fair increase in benefits next year. I should point out, in terms of this offset, no one in America earning $250,000 or less would see their payroll taxes go up at all.

So I think this is an important issue. I think seniors all over this country are worried about their financial situation. They want the Congress to pay attention to their needs. I think the one-time financial support of a check of $250, while not a whole lot of money, would at least help many people not see a reduction in their Social Security checks and would be of real help.

Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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