Senator Graham Press Relases
Contact: Wes Hickman (202-224-5972) or Kevin Bishop (864-250-1417)
Date: 06/14/2004
Statement from U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on the Congressional Budget Office Social Security Report
WASHINGTON- U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made the following statement on a new report by the Congressional Budget Office regarding the future of Social Security.
“The new report released by CBO today confirms the findings of the last 17 annual reports of the Social Security Trustees: Social Security as it is currently structured is insolvent and unsustainable. While the differences in the estimates should be fully studied by economists and actuaries, they are not an excuse to delay strengthening Social Security.
“Every Social Security expert agrees that future generations will face a severe gap between the benefits Social Security owes, and the payroll taxes coming in to fund them. Even with the more optimistic assumptions used by the CBO, the long term deficits facing Social Security do not go away.
“The simple fact remains that the number of workers supporting each retiree has dropped from 15-to-1 in 1950 to 3-to-1 today. Within a generation there will only be two workers supporting each retiree.
“The forces that are stopping honest reform from going forward are intellectual dishonesty and lack of political courage. No matter how hard we try to ignore the warnings from a countless number of policy experts we won’t fix the problem until we roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
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