Washington, DC -- Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY-17), and 124 other Democratic members of the House sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) urging himnot to shut down the Social Security Administration (SSA) by restoring reasonable funding to agency in the House Republican 2011 budget. Under the proposed Republican budget the SSA would shut down for a month this year.

“While the Republicans continue their wholesale cutting of the social safety net and programs especially beneficial to the middle class, we are missing the opportunity to find a bipartisan solution to our very real budget problem.  Their proposed cuts to the Social Security Administration could have a drastic impact on our seniors who rely on this funding.   Many of our seniors cannot afford to miss one payment to help them get by, and these cuts would surely put them in jeopardy.  The Republicans’ methods are to target programs they have opposed for decades for ideological reasons.  Their method of cutting amounted to taking a meat ax to the budget when a scalpel would have been more effective and cause less suffering,” said Rep. Engel, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

“Their next target will be Social Security. The last Republican House Majority pushed through an agenda which would have privatized Social Security and put millions of seniors at risk.  Imagine if millions of seniors had their Social Security in the stock market at the time that the economy took a downward turn.  It would have been devastating.  Until we start discussing cuts to tax subsidies to oil companies and the richest one percent of Americans, we cannot talk about placing the burden of a balanced budget on our senior citizens,” he added.

In a letter to employees last month, SSA cautioned that it may have to furlough workers if cuts to its budget are enacted into law. In their Continuing Resolution, Republicans have proposed cutting SSA’s administrative funding by more than 9 percent in 2011, from $11.8 billion in 2010 to $10.7 billion this year. In addition, the Republican proposal provides for $1.7 billion less than SSA needs to keep pace with inflation and rising workloads. 

Click here to read the letter to Speaker Boehner.

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