Quotes About Government

Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them - take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

To me, it is clear that the Social Security program is constitutional.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

All of us who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate pay into Social Security.

Since 1935, this has been a pay-as-you-go system, and I always believed when I first started talking about Social Security that there was a little box that had my name on it and it had my benefits for when I retired. That is not true.

Social Security is a social insurance program - it is not designed to be the same thing as a 401(k).

It's critical - that the people that are benefiting today from Medicare and Social Security that they not see benefit reductions. It's awfully hard to tell someone who might be 82, that they've gotta go back to work, because their benefits are gonna be chopped. That's not gonna happen.

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.

I don't support getting rid of Social Security.

If we didn't have Social Security, our seniors would live mostly in poverty. You'd have another 18 million people in poverty.

Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.

No one was elected to Congress because he or she promised to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

What we need is to make our senior citizens feel secure once more with their own Social Security and Medicare. But going forward, we need to personalize that program in a way that the government can't go in and raid it any more.

We ought to look at Social Security. We ought to ask ourselves the question, is there inherently something wrong with Social Security that a man like me is eligible for Social Security? There's something wrong with the system.

I should not get Social Security. I think it's a travesty for a man of my success and of my means to get anything from the federal government.

Social Security is fundamentally strong.

When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn't have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare.

The Social Security disability fund is going belly up in 2016.

In 1935, the year Social Security was created, the poverty rate for seniors was over 70%.

I've never said anything about privatizing Social Security.

People talk about Social Security. There is no parallel between Rhode Island's pension and Social Security.

If a country like Chile can fix its social security system, there is no reason a country as great as the United States... can't fix our Social Security system.

We're the party that has fought for Medicare. We're the party that has fought for Social Security. The Republicans have tried to privatize Social Security and voucherize Medicare.