John Dingell Quotes

We should stop having a conversation about cutting Social Security a little bit or a lot.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

Most of my folks back home think Social Security and Medicare are sacred commitments stronger than the strongest contract. And yet if you look at the details here in Washington, they're not even promises. They're scheduled benefits. I think we need to do all that we can to make sure those benefits are real.

We must unequivocally reject any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits.

The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.

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

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

And in terms of entitlement reforms, we have to save them from themselves, because if we don't reform social security and we don't reform Medicare, they're going to actually implode.

There is a need for Social Security reform to ensure its stability, and Congress must act.

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it.

A budget matters to people who worry about protecting and saving critical programs like Medicare and Social Security. A budget matters to younger workers who fear that more and more money will be taken from their paychecks to fund another generation's spending spree.

Because Social Security has not contributed to our debt, Americans should be skeptical of any politician who says that benefits Americans have earned must be reduced in order to address our national debt.

I'm gonna keep Social Security without change, except I'm going to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse; same thing with Medicare.

I think that whether you're on the right or on the left as an economist or as a policy maker, every serious analyst I know agrees that at some point you have to deal with entitlements.

When you talk about entitlement programs, it's not just about - it's not about cutting those programs. It is about saving those programs. Those programs are on a path of fiscal unsustainability.

Social Security and Medicare represent promises made and we must keep these commitments.

Social Security and Medicare are among the best things about America.

I'm a conservative, but with a focus on average people. For instance, I support Social Security and Medicare.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.

It's clear that the medium and long-run fiscal challenges facing the country have to do with the rise of entitlement spending, they have to do with the longer run imbalances that we've created in the structure of the system.

America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all those kinds of things have to be paid for.

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins.

What I'd like to do is be able to work with Democrats to reform current entitlement programs for future generations, grandfathering all the grandparents.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.