Contact: Lawrence A. Hunter
Telephone: 202.460.9007
lhunter@SocialSecurityInstitute.com

 Conservative Seniors Group Breaks With GOP
On Cutting Social Security

The Social Security Institute Airs TV Ad Slamming Plans To Cut Social Security

 November 18, 2011 (Warrenton, Virginia) — Today, The Social Security Institute released a TV ad it intends to run nation wide demanding that Congress and the President take Social Security cuts off the table in debt-reduction discussions. (View the TV ad by clicking here or go to http://youtu.be/vTLOruamry4)

The ad urges senior citizens to sign a petition that lays out the reasons Social Security cuts are unjustified and morally wrong.  The petition also calls on Congress and the president to refrain from making any cuts to Social Security in pursuit of deficit reduction. (Read the petition by clicking here.)

The petition and the letter to Congress accompanying it argue that for more than 20 years, American workers were forced to overpay their Social Security taxes to build up a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund, which now amounts to more than $2.5 trillion. Workers and retirees were promised those surpluses would be used to safeguard and guarantee their Social Security benefits and secure them from cuts.

Instead, Congress spent those surpluses for everything but Social Security; on everything from paper clips to battleships.

According to the Social Security Trustees, there are sufficient federal bonds in the Trust Fund to ensure that all current Social Security benefits are paid in full and on time for another 25 years. Congress and the president have both a legal and a moral obligation to redeem those bonds to pay current retirees’ Social Security benefits in full and on time.

Congress and the president have spent the United States to the brink of bankruptcy and significant spending cuts must be made.  However, there is more than adequate other extravagant and wasteful federal spending and bailouts to insolvent banks and businesses that can be cut to lower the deficit and reduce the national debt.

Social Security is not welfare; senior citizens on Social Security are not welfare queens.  Seniors earned their Social Security benefits.  There is no necessity or justifiable reasons to cut Social Security for current retirees.

There is much talk in Washington and in the media of cutting Social Security recipients’ annual cost of living allowances (COLAs) by changing the way annual inflation is measured and replacing the current Consumer Price Index (CPI) with the so-called “Chained CPI.”  SSI warns Congress:  “Don’t do it!”

The current method of measuring inflation for purposes of computing Social Security COLAs significantly understates price increases that most affect senior citizens, which means annual COLAs already are too low.  If anything, the measure of inflation should be changed to more accurately reflect the relatively greater price increases faced by most senior citizens.

The letter that SSI urges seniors to send Congress, the president and presidential candidates concludes by stating that the writer’s vote in the upcoming elections will hinge on whether or not the recipient of the letter voted for or supported a cut to Social Security.

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