[Pages H4872-H4875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

IT IS TIME TO ACT ON SOCIAL SECURITY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Larson) for 5 minutes.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I am here this morning to
talk about Social Security.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two articles: The first is
entitled, ``It's time for U.S. Congress to debate Social Security
reform in the light of day'' by The New York Times reporter Mark
Miller.
The second is ``The Early Impact of COVID-19 on Job Losses among
Black Women in the United States'' submitted by Michelle Holder.

It's Time For U.S. Congress to Debate Social Security Reform in the
Light of Day

(By Mark Miller, May 5, 2022)

(Reuters).--Social Security has never failed to make its
benefit payments since the mailing of monthly checks began in
1940, but most Americans these days are worried about the
future of the program.
Who can blame them? Social Security's two trust funds are
projected to run dry in 2034, and the program would be able
to pay only 80 percent of its obligations to retirees and
disabled workers at that point. Politicians don't exactly
generate confidence when they make irresponsible--and wrong--
comments claiming that Social Security is going bankrupt or
running out of money.
The result is public skepticism and concern. Forty-two
percent of working Americans tell Pew Research Center
pollsters that they doubt they will receive any benefits from
Social Security. An equal share thinks they will receive a
benefit, but at a reduced level.
The Social Security trustees have been projecting this
shortfall since the early 1990s, but the U.S. Congress has
failed to act. What we need is a full, public debate on
reform legislation--and an actual vote by lawmakers. The
window is open for that to happen this year--the Democratic
Party has developed an internal consensus on legislation that
addresses the solvency problem, and also expands benefits
modestly. It controls both legislative chambers--at least for
now. The Social Security 2100 Act is supported by 202 House
Democrats--in other words, nearly the entire party caucus.
The bill probably cannot jump the hurdle of a Republican
filibuster in the U.S. Senate, but it is imperative to get
everyone in Congress on the record with a vote on this issue.
``People have got to know where you stand,'' said U.S.
Representative John Larson, a Connecticut Democrat and chief
sponsor of the legislation.

EXPANDED BENEFITS

The Social Security 2100 legislation would close 52 percent
of the long-term shortfall, according to an analysis by the
Social Security actuaries. It would push the trust fund
depletion date back to 2038 by adding new payroll taxes to
wages over $400,000--currently, taxation stops at $147,000.
Earlier versions of the bill restored solvency for 75 years
by also gradually increasing payroll tax rates, but that has
been eliminated to reflect President Joe Biden's campaign
pledge not to raise taxes on people with incomes below
$400,000 per year.
The bill does recognize the need to expand benefits, which
can help address rising income inequality, and racial and
gender gaps in retirement security. The COVID-19 pandemic has
widened those gaps. What's more, Gen-Xers and Millennials are
likely to fare even worse than boomers and today's seniors
when they reach retirement. This is the result of factors
including escalating higher-education costs, staggering
student debt burdens, wage stagnation, soaring housing costs
and the decline of traditional defined benefit pensions.

Social Security 2100 includes a modest 2 percent across-
the-board boost in benefits, and it would shift the annual
cost-of-living

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increase to a more generous formula. It also includes
targeted benefit increases such as a new minimum benefit
level for very low income seniors, and improved benefits for
widows and widowers. It also would provide caregiver credits
that increase benefits for people who take time out of the
workforce to care for dependent family members. And it would
repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and
Government Pension Offset (GPO), which currently penalize
many people who work in the public sector.
What would Republicans do to solve the Social Security
problem if they take control of Congress next year?
Earlier versions of Republican reform plans have called for
benefit cuts in the form of higher retirement ages and means
testing. U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican,
recently set off a small firestorm with a proposal to sunset
all federal legislation every five years--an idea that at
least in theory would require regular reauthorization of
Social Security and Medicare. He also wants every American to
pay income taxes--no matter their level of income.
Republicans have also made clear that they prefer to handle
Social Security reform behind closed doors. Senator Mitt
Romney, a Utah Republican, has proposed the ironically named
TRUST Act, which would create a closed process for
legislators to propose changes to the Social Security and
Medicare trust funds, culminating in an up or down vote
process.
This approach is a favorite play for lawmakers looking to
keep their fingerprints off unpopular legislation--bills
emerge from faceless, bipartisan committees. The last time it
was attempted for Social Security was the unsuccessful
Bowles-Simpson commission, which proposed a range of
unpopular benefit cuts in 2011 that would have impacted
middle-class seniors.
Fighting to improve Social Security would fulfill a promise
that Biden made as a presidential candidate, and it could
energize voters. Public opinion polling has consistently
shown strong public support for maintaining current benefit
levels, even if new taxes are needed.
New polling by Data for Progress shows that increasing
benefits would make a large chunk of independent voters more
likely to support Democratic candidates for Congress this
fall. The idea of shoring up Social Security polls extremely
well with middle-class Americans: 63 percent of those without
a college degree tell Pew pollsters that Social Security
finances should a top priority for Congress and the
president.
This is a battle worth fighting in 2022.
____

[From Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, July 2020]

Working Paper No. 963

The Early Impact of COVID-19 on Job Losses Among Black Women in the
United States

(Michelle Holder, John Jay College, City University of New York)

(Janelle Jones, Groundwork Collaborative)

(Thomas Masterson, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College)

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic seemingly appeared out of nowhere but
changed nearly everything. Until February of 2020, the
American economy had been at what is considered full
employment levels--3.5 percent overall. Even African
Americans, who traditionally occupy a less favorable position
in the labor market (as measured by unemployment and wage
disparities) were experiencing historically low levels of
unemployment. However, the first signs of the massive job
losses that were to come appeared when initial claims filed
for unemployment insurance rose to unprecedented levels in
March, leaping from approximately 220,000 new claims filed
each week since the start of the year to an astonishing 3.3
million by the third week in March, then more than doubling
the following week to 6.9 million. While this pace slowed
down in May, new claims for unemployment insurance in the
United States still numbered in the millions each week. With
shelter-in-place orders implemented across the country in
February and March, along with state-by-state mandatory
shutdowns of ``nonessential'' businesses, aggregate demand
for many goods and services ground to a halt, leaving tens of
millions of American workers jobless.
As the pandemic unfolded, industries deemed nonessential,
such as leisure, hospitality, and retail trade, were leveled.
Many occupations in these industries are low-wage, and women
constitute a greater share of the low-wage labor force in the
United States than men (Holder 2018, 689). Moreover, the
largest share of minimum wage workers in America is female
(Holder 2017, 12). Thus, when the US Department of Labor's
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their monthly
``Employment Situation'' report for April on May 8 (a week
later than it normally would have) it was met with only
modest surprise that the April unemployment rate for women
exceeded the unemployment rate for men--16.2 percent versus
13.2 percent, respectively (US DOL 2020). The pattern of
higher unemployment for women as compared to men is also true
in the Black community, along with the US's long-standing
pattern of an unemployment rate for Blacks that routinely
exceeds that of Whites--16.7 percent and 14.2 percent,
respectively (US DOL 2020).
As COVID-19 deaths began to mount, it became clear that
African Americans were disparately affected not only with
regard to their livelihoods, but also their very lives; while
the Black community is 13 percent of the US population, given
inequitable access to healthcare as well as other structural
inequalities, they accounted for roughly one-quarter of all
deaths in the country as of May 28, 2020 (US CDC 2020).
Moreover, as some American workers were able to do their jobs
from the comfort of their homes, a high proportion of
``essential'' workers (somewhat loosely defined as those who
work in supermarkets, public transportation, pharmacies,
grocery stores, nursing homes, hospitals, and correctional
facilities, among other industries) were African American,
other people of color, women, and an intersection of the
these groups--women of color. The goal of this paper is to
closely examine the contours, depth, and causes of COVID-l9's
impact on Black women's employment in the United States.
Because the early job loss numbers indicate that women in the
United States have thus far borne the brunt of the COVID-19-
inspired downturn, most demographic comparisons we make in
this text will be between female demographic groups,
primarily Black and White women, using the lenses of both
feminist economic theory and stratification economics.

GENDER AND RACE IN THE COVID-19 DOWNTURN

The recession of the early 1980s, as well as the Great
Recession, were downturns in which men, Black workers, and
Latinx workers experienced disproportionate job loss, mostly
attributable to the industrial distribution of these groups--
they tend to be employed in industries that are more
vulnerable to cyclical downturns (Hoynes, Miller, and
Schaller 2012). Although there were across-the-board job
losses among all major demographic groups during the Great
Recession, according to Haynes, Miller, and Schaller (2012)
the smallest absolute increase in unemployment during that
downturn occurred among White women. Those researchers
attributed this to the industrial distribution of women whom,
they posited, tend to be employed in industries less
vulnerable to cyclicality than industries in which men are
concentrated. Women of color, however, were more vulnerable
than women overall, given the roles of race and ethnicity in
that group's industrial distribution.
The current economic downturn in the United States,
however, is quite unlike business cycle downturns of the
past. The normal predictions and expectations of where job
losses were going to occur have not closely followed past
patterns. Industries such as leisure and hospitality, retail
trade, construction, manufacturing, and ``other services''
(including personal care services) were labeled as
``nonessential,'' and companies operating in these industries
were ordered, state by state, to temporarily cease or slow
down operations. Industries operating in the sphere of
``essential services'' were allowed to continue, but with
significant restrictions, resulting in significant declines
in economic activity. With much of the US population
sheltering in place during the early phases of the pandemic--
including those employees who were able to work from home--
other industries still considered essential, like
transportation, experienced a massive slowdown m activity.
Unlike the Great Recession and the recession of the early
1980s, women, particularly women of color, were bearing the
brunt of early job losses given the extraordinary nature in
which economic activity was deliberately, not organically,
slowed down or halted. Rising unemployment among women, given
their overrepresentation in service industries and
occupations, became pervasive (see Boushey and Sanchez
Cumming 2020). While jobholding by Black women in services
deemed essential (like hospitals and supermarkets) offered
some insulation against job loss, this was not enough to
offset large job losses in other sectors.

CHANGES IN LABOR FORCE INDICATORS FOR WOMEN DURING THE EARLY PANDEMIC

The seasonally adjusted US unemployment rate for April 2020
climbed by slightly more than 10 percentage points, to 14.7
percent from 4.4 percent in March. This increase was the
largest month-to-month change in over 70 years. Moreover, the
April unemployment rate was nearly 50 percent higher than the
average US unemployment rate during the 18-month period of
the Great Recession. This was clearly an astonishing rate of
job loss. Drilling down the numbers by gender and race,
Latinas appear to have experienced the highest unemployment
rate in April--20.2
percent--followed by African American women at 16.2 percent; White
women's unemployment rate reached 15 percent (US DOL
2020). However, the change in the rate of unemployment
only captures part of the story; after averaging
approximately 63 percent for the first quarter of 2020,
the overall labor force participation rate declined to
just over 60 percent in April, signaling the start of an
exodus from the American labor force. The official
unemployment rate does not capture individuals who are not
in the labor force, and that number swelled by about 8
million in April, with nearly half of this increase
attributable to persons who wanted to work but who could
not find employment.
Among major female demographic groups for whom the BLS
provides monthly data, Black women possessed both the highest
labor force participation rate as well as employment-
population ratio, leaving this

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group especially vulnerable to the COVID-19-inspired
downturn, given their strong attachment to the workforce.
Black women's unemployment rate for April shot up to 16.4
percent, higher than that for Black men, whose unemployment
rate reached 16.2 percent that month. Unlike the Great
Recession of 2007-9, where the unemployment rate for Black
men significantly exceeded that of Black women, the early
impact of COVID-19 on unemployment has clearly been
``gendered,'' with more intense ramifications for African
American women.
In comparing Black and White women, in February of this
year, prior to the initial impact of COVID-19 on US
employment, Black women not only had a higher unemployment
rate than White women (4.8 percent versus 2.8 percent,
respectively), but also a higher labor force participation
rate (63.8 percent versus 58.2 percent, respectively).
Feminist economists such as Nina Banks (2019), Cecilia Conrad
(2005), and Randy Albelda (1985) have long highlighted the
historically higher labor force participation rate of Black
women compared to White women in the United States. As noted
in the preceding paragraph, this attachment to the labor
force also makes Black women more vulnerable during economic
downturns. In examining table 1, while there appears to be
little difference in the increase in the unemployment rate
from February to April for Black women compared to White
women, because of Black women's more entrenched--and, at the
same time, more precarious attachment to the American
workforce (evidenced by historically higher unemployment
rates than White women)--the impact of COVID-19 on Black
women's position in the labor force has been somewhat deeper
than that for White women, with slightly larger (and
statistically significant) declines for Black women than
White women in both the labor force participation rate and
the employment-population ratio.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The early job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic were
characterized by gender and racial disparities. With regard
to job losses by industry, the ``healthcare and social
services'' industry accounted for nearly 14 percent of all
workers in the United States but 28 percent of employed Black
women and 22 percent of employed White women; the 17 percent
decline in employment in this industry, therefore, was bound
to have an outsized impact on women. Feminist economic theory
has explored the role that discrimination plays in
occupational crowding by gender, notably the historical
exclusion of women from jobs that are deemed more appropriate
for men (see Beller 1982). In addition, Black women, along
with Black men, suffered disproportionately staggering losses
in the ``accommodation and food services'' industry, an
industry leveled during the pandemic, where the
overrepresentation of Black female and Black male workers
exceeds that of their White counterparts. This industry
offers notoriously low wages and stratification economic
theory suggests that privileged groups have a material
interest in maintaining sexism and racism--as well as other
forms of oppression--because benefits accrue to advantaged
groups as a whole (see Darity et. al. 2017). This is true
even though the benefits do not necessarily accrue to all
individual members of the privileged group at all times.
Thus, discrimination can and does persist in market-based
economies. The crowding of Black workers in low-wage
industries is suggestive of opportunity hoarding by White
workers, consistent with stratification economic theory.
Occupationally, the roles of both gender and race proved to
be disastrous for employment losses for Black women. The only
two major occupational categories that experienced employment
declines greater than 50 percent--``food preparation and
serving'' (which accounts for just over 5 percent of all
workers) and ``personal care and services'' (which accounts
for nearly 3 percent of all workers)--are two occupations
where, among Black and White employees, Black women are the
only demographic group overrepresented in both.
The pandemic has catalyzed a public health and economic
crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. In one
month, the unemployment rate increased by 10 percentage
points, the largest month-to-month increase in more than a
generation. While the devastation has been widespread, it is
not shared equitably across race and gender. There are two
main reasons why Black women are disproportionately impacted
by the COVID-19 recession. First, Black women in the labor
market face high levels of occupational and industrial
segregation. Second, Black women's strong attachment to the
labor market, as measured by their labor force participation
rate and employment-to-population ratio, makes them more
vulnerable to economic downturns, and this current recession
is no exception.
Unlike previous economic downturns, industries once thought
immune to recessions were ordered by government officials to
stop or significantly slow their activity. Between February
and April, when the economy shed millions of jobs, Black
women experienced larger-than-overall declines in employment
due to their concentration in parts of the economy. Black
women are overrepresented in ``essential'' jobs, like nursing
assistants and cashiers, while at the same time also
overrepresented in occupations and industries that are
shedding workers by the millions, such as hotels,
restaurants, and retail trade. In responding to this economic
crisis, policymakers must firmly commit to a policy agenda
that provides immediate relief to those who need it and make
our economy more stable and equitable in the future. In the
short term, we should continue to give direct support to
families through cash payments and an expansion of
unemployment benefits. In the long term, we can enact
policies that fix the structural flaws of our system,
including using economic measures tied directly to the
position and status of Black women in order to more
accurately determine when an economy has reached those often
left behind.

Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I think as Martin Luther
King would say, it is the ``fierce urgency of now'' that we are dealing
with, and by that I mean the fierce urgency being the pandemic that
this country is currently going through.
That pandemic has taken more than 740,000 Americans over the age of
65. That same group over the age of 65 is the group that is hurt most
by inflation. Why? Because they are on fixed incomes. They are Social
Security recipients. And they need our help now.
The good news, thanks to the efforts of Chairman Neal and the Ways
and Means Committee, we have established a Racial Equity Task Force.
The gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell), the gentleman from Nevada
(Mr. Horsford), and the gentleman from California (Mr. Gomez) have all
put together extensive reporting that talks about the inequality that
exists in what our colleague John Lewis said was the next civil rights
movement, and that is to make sure we uplift everybody in this country
who has worked all their lives, paid into a system, and receives below-
poverty-level checks from their government.
That is about to end with the passage of Social Security 2100: A
Sacred Trust, called the sacred trust by President Biden because it is.
We no longer have to go back to the Great Depression to talk about the
impact of Social Security and why it came into prominence. You only
have to go back as far as 2008-2009 to understand that during that
recession, people saw their 401(k) become a 101(k).
During that same time period, Social Security never missed a payment,
not a spousal, not a dependent coverage payment, not a pension payment,
and not a disability payment.
With Memorial Day approaching, it was good listening to the Members
come and talk about honoring our veterans on Memorial Day. Several came
down this week honoring National Police Week as well, talking about
police officers who need help. Millions of police officers and their
spouses across this country, because of WEP and GPO, are penalized and
don't receive the Social Security benefits that they richly deserve.
President Biden has put an end to that.
Richard Neal has also introduced legislation as well with respect to
that. So has Mr. Davis and Mr. Brady on the Republican side. It is long
overdue. If you want to help police officers, if you want to help our
veterans, so many of whom rely more on Social Security Disability than
they do on the VA, we need to reform Social Security. Congress has not
enhanced Social Security in more than 51 years. A gallon of milk in
1971 cost 72 cents. Look at the cost now, not only of milk but of bread
and butter and gas and rent, and understand the absolute necessity to
help out the people who during this pandemic need it the most.
Congress can no longer kick the can down the road. This is our
responsibility on our watch; and on Memorial Day, every citizen in this
country ought to be asking Congress what it is going to do. What do we
have to do? A very simple thing that we take an oath of office and
raise our hands and pledge allegiance to the Constitution, and that is
vote. Vote on an issue that will help the people of this great Nation
out: People who have been neglected, more than 3 million who have paid
in all their lives and get below-poverty-level checks; millennials and
Gen Xers, who are going to need Social Security even more than the
10,000 baby boomers a day who become eligible for Social Security. The
time to act is now.
Let's heed the words of Martin Luther King and understand the
``fierce urgency of now'' so that people won't have to put food back on
the shelves that they can't afford or be turned

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back from the drugs that they need to purchase and that they have a
quality of life that they richly deserve in the wealthiest nation in
the world.
We can pay for this all by just simply raising the cap on people over
$400,000. Those wealthy people can afford to pay the same level that
people making $50,000. It is long overdue. The time to act is now.

____________________