[Page H50]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT MERELY A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM

  (Ms. PRESSLEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. PRESSLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Larson for his 
inspired and indefatigable leadership on this critical issue.
  As someone who represents nearly 100,000 Social Security 
beneficiaries in the Massachusetts 7th and as a co-chair for the Task 
Force on Aging and Families, I am so proud to be an original cosponsor 
of your Social Security 2100 Act.
  This is a deeply consequential issue that stands to impact 
individuals from every walk of life--women, children, people of color, 
veterans, and our seniors--who have the right, who have earned the 
right, to age in dignity.
  Too often they tell me that doing so is becoming more and more 
difficult. They share their anxieties of living on a fixed income. They 
are skeptical of the long-term stability of a system they have paid 
into, paycheck after paycheck, their entire working lives; people like 
Mrs. Palmer who lives in Boston and wrote my office saying that Social 
Security is a promise.
  I agree. It is not merely a government program. Social Security is a 
promise to workers, to our elders, to the disabled, a promise to all 
people who seek to age with dignity. We will keep fighting to keep that 
promise.

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