Larson Opening Statement at Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

(As prepared for delivery)

Good morning and thank you Mr. Chairman for calling this important hearing.

Before we begin, I also want to wish our colleague Mr. Kildee a speedy recovery on behalf of all members of the Ways and Means Committee. Come on back, Dan there's work to be done.

Today we will hear from our highly respected civil servants who are impeccably nonpartisan.

While today's hearing will discuss the long-term fiscal health of trillions of dollars of Social Security, it is an appropriate starting point however it has to be followed by the human infrastructure, in essence, the statistics we're most interested in are the American people: who they are and where they live and how important Social Security is to them.

And that's why we've supplied each of you with a card, because they are in each and every one of your districts. Today, more than 65 million Americans receive Social Security

More than 10,000 Baby Boomers a day qualify. By the end of 2023, that's 70 million people relying on Social Security. I respect the Chairman and take him at his word that he wants the facts. So here are the facts that we believe must come and must be heard from beneficiaries and because if we don't personalize this and we don't hear from them and you don't take what's on that card in front of you seriously, you are doing a disservice to the people in your community.

Mr. Chairman, it is my sincere hope that we can use the month of May, designated 60 years ago, by President John F. Kennedy as Older Americans Month and in 1965 President Johnson signed it into law to bring forward the issues important to Social Security beneficiaries. In your honor, Mr. Chairman we have a extra-large Social Security card so you can see how important it is to your district.

This is an American program, all of Congress has been negligent. I want to work biapartisanly with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but we cannot support cuts that will hurt current and future beneficiaries.

I want to trust the gentlemen on the other side of the dias but I have a healthy skepticism since every single member of the Republican side of this Subcommittee is a member of the Republican Study Committee. There are 175 House Republicans on the RSC. The Republican Study Committee's "Blueprint to Save America" would cut $729 billion from Social Security in the next 10 years.

It calls for 20 separate cuts, and 20% across the board cuts. I would like to enter it into the record. In our discussions, Mr. Ferguson has said he will protect Social Security, so I am glad to see that he is distancing himself from the RSC Plan today.

More than 5 million people receive a below poverty-level check from Social Security despite a lifetime of work- most of them women. Over 8.5 million veterans received Social Security benefits in 2021.148,000 people in the district I represent receive Social Security benefits each month. Even with COLA increases, those benefits have lost 40% of their buying power since 2000. If we do not act, automatic cuts will begin in 2034. And it will further underscore what Roosevelt said about a government that fails to act for its people, that it is frozen in the ice of its own indifference

Do not think you can talk but not act. Seniors and the disabled are getting by on less because of Congressional negligence. I encourage us to come together, in a vitality of ideas. Social Security is suffering from congressional neglect. Congress must vote.

Over the last few years between the global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues, who has suffered the most? Seniors over 65, most on fixed incomes. More than 830,000 of them died due to COVID. We have the opportunity right now to do something that the American people will be grateful for for generations. It is incumbent upon us to help. We sit here, on the committee of cognizance, and we must act.

I hope to see a plan that Republicans put forth that increases benefits for current and future beneficiaries. I look forward to hearing from our esteemed witnesses today, and I hope to hear the voices of beneficiaries in the future.