Social Security

SOCIAL SECURITY -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2005)

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding and giving me the opportunity to speak today.

And I also wanted to particularly emphasize why Social Security has been so important and will continue to be to women. Like many of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, I had an open forum, a town meeting, on Social Security. Nearly 1,000 people showed up. We could not believe it. We had a room set for about 350. We hoped to fill it at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Monday. I did it along with my two Senators from Illinois, Senators DURBIN and OBAMA, and then we had an overflow room and then an overflow for the overflow room and still had to turn people away, young people, older people, persons on disabilities.

I want to tell my colleagues one story. It may not be obvious at first why this is a story about why Social Security is important to women. A friend of mine, someone I have known for a very long time, a gentleman, middle-aged, got up and talked about something I never knew before. And he was telling about how his first wife died at the age of 35 and left him with their three children, three young children. And he said how Social Security and those benefits made it possible for them to hold the family together and for those children to go on to college. But the other thing that he added, which was so poignant, was that that Social Security benefit enabled his wife, his deceased wife, to keep the promise that she had made to their children to always take care of them. And even now it brings tears to my eyes when I think of that.

So that they could feel it was their mother that was helping enable them to go on to college to be the second generation. They are African-American, and for that family to go on to college. And I thought that was really moving.

In Illinois, we have looked at some of the statistics about how women rely on Social Security more than men do. This is a little bit dryer but important nonetheless. In Illinois, 19 percent of adults receive Social Security benefits. Think of that. Nearly one in five adults, including 21 percent of women and 16 percent of men. About almost a million women and 718,000 men and 116,000 children rely on Social Security benefits. Women represent 5 percent of all the people 65 and older in Illinois who rely on Social Security benefits. And without those benefits, 55 percent of elderly women in Illinois would be poor.

The typical recipient of a Social Security widow's benefit in Illinois, the widow that is left, receives $921 per month. But if we calculate out what we know of the President's proposal, the plan he prefers, and we look down the future at what would the typical widow in Illinois get, that amounts to, instead of the $921 per month, $506 per month or a 45 percent cut in benefits.

So it is no wonder that so many people, young people and older people, came out to this hearing because they are worried. And it was significant to me when young women stood up and said, Do you know who could reap the worst of this privatization plan, it is me, it is us. It is the young women. It is the young people. Because it is we who will see our benefits cut, who will see the debt that is mounting have to be paid off by us.

At the same time we are looking for the jobs that have the benefits, that have the pension plans right now, trying to figure out how we are going to pay off those college loans, and we do not know what our future is going to be if that guaranteed benefit of Social Security is changed into a gamble.

Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is an excellent point, and the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick) made it earlier as well when she stated quite succinctly and clearly, Social Security was never intended to be in and of itself the retirement vehicle. It was, as she pointed out, the third leg of a three-legged stool, having pensions, which we know are under stressed everywhere; personal savings, where it is so difficult for people to save; but the thing that people could count on.
The reason that it came into existence was to provide, as the gentlewoman has pointed out, an absolute guarantee, the full faith and credit of the United States of America standing behind its commitment to its citizens. It is as simple and as fundamental as that and more eloquently stated by our citizens and the young women who have come to forums and hearings and town hall meetings like the gentlewoman's all across this country.
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that it is no wonder, then, that the women's organizations, bipartisan women's organizations, are opposing this privatization plan. The American Association of University Women, the League of Women Voters, who go through a very rigorous process in order to come to a position. They are raising all kinds of concerns and say that diverting money from the Social Security trust fund into private accounts could hasten the insolvency of the fund. The result could include a substantial increase in the deficit and significant cuts in some or all of the Social Security's retirement and disability and survivor benefits. The National Women's Law Center, the National Council of Women's Organizations, the Older Women's League, all these organizations are opposed to these risky privatization plans.

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