The dozens of citizens present Monday morning at Palmer Senior Center in Independence were likely just children when Social Security was signed into law Aug. 14, 1935.
But 75 years later, they joined U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and Richard Neal, D-Mass., in singing “Happy Birthday” and cutting the cake in honor of Social Security’s 75th anniversary. Neal, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, called Social Security “the greatest legislative achievement domestically in U.S. history.”
The town hall meeting was the first of three that Cleaver sponsored in the 5th District on Monday. Questions were fielded from audience members, though most of them dealt with health care legislation, Proposition C in Missouri and the Federal Reserve.
According to Neal, half of the people who go to work each day in the United States do not belong to a retirement plan. Retirement, he said, is typically seen as a three-legged stool consisting of personal savings, a pension plan and Social Security payments. Every month, 50 million Americans receives a Social Security check.
“There is no reason to privatize Social Security,” Neal said. “You know what you’re going to get with Social Security. You cannot outlive Social Security; you can outlive a private annuity.”
At age 61, Neal’s personal experience with Social Security started early in life. His mother died of a heart attack at age 47 and his father died at age 56. Neal and his sisters moved in with their grandmother and an aunt in the late 1960s, relying on pension payments and Social Security checks. Neal said he and his sisters each received $119 per month to live on.
“We all pull the wagon in our youth because we might have to sit in the wagon someday,” Neal said.
While Social Security is now experiencing challenges, the system “is not going broke,” Neal said. Recent reports stated Social Security will pay full benefits through 2037. After that, Neal and Cleaver said, benefits will be paid out at 75 cents on the dollar for decades.
Since 1975, Social Security general benefit increases have taken place with a cost-of-living adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index, not a Congressional decision. For the first time in the COLA’s 35-year history, one did not take place in 2010 because of no increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers from the third quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2009, according to the Social Security Administration.
It has yet to be determined if a COLA increase will take place in January 2011, Neal said.
Social Security benefits remain the same if no COLA occurs, and because of the “hold harmless” provision, Medicare B premiums remain frozen for most beneficiaries so that Social Security checks don’t decrease when no COLA is provided.
Some people might call Social Security an entitlement, Cleaver said, but he sees it differently.
“You earned it – nobody is giving you anything,” Cleaver said. “You paid into it.”
