Eduardo Bhatia Quotes

Our nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve.

Corporations are reneging on pension obligations. Social Security is under attack.

Privatizing Social Security will take dollars out of young folks' pockets.

We need to take steps to strengthen and mend Social Security so that its promise of a secure retirement is just as real for seniors in the future as it is today.

With or without a Social Security fix, Americans don't have enough assets to retire on. There has to be a much larger debate.

Social Security is an insurance policy. It's a terrible investment vehicle. Social Security has some great benefits. But it was never meant to be a savings plan. So we need to have a national debate. Should this 12.5 percent that we're contributing all go into a Social Security pool, or should half go into a mandatory savings plan?

But with a rate of return of 1.6 percent or less, or a negative rate of return, our children and our grandchildren, if we do not make changes, will in fact not have a secure retirement. Indeed, they will not have the funds when they go to retire to even minimally get by.

The rate of return on Social Security for people nearing retirement is about 1.5 percent. By the time young children like mine are ready to retire, that rate of return will be a negative percentage.

There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement.

Privatizing Social Security doesn't make sense, and it's out of step with the fundamental value of ensuring that after a life spent working hard and contributing to the greatness of our nation, every American should have a secure retirement.

We have a rare and perhaps small window of opportunity to set partisan differences aside, and attempt to achieve what many in recent years have felt was unreachable - greater retirement security for ourselves and our children.

There's a lot we can do to improve American's retirement security, but it's wrong to replace the guaranteed benefit that Americans have earned with a guaranteed benefit cut of forty percent or more.

We have so many people retiring that we do not have enough people paying into the system to be able to provide the benefits for those collecting those benefits.

Our society has changed in unforeseeable ways since Social Security was created. For example, we are living longer, healthier, and more productive lives and while this is all great news, this has also placed added pressure on America's retirement system.

Our seniors' retirement should never rely on the bull of political promises or the bear of the market.

Well, today people have to be self-reliant if they want a secure retirement income.

Our government makes the simple promise of a secure retirement to every American who works for many years and contributes to our retirement benefit system.

Social Security not only helps Americans enjoy a secure retirement, it has also kept millions of Americans out of poverty.

Well, we certainly need to raise the retirement age. I've told my 19-year-old and my 22-year-old that they're not going to be getting retirement benefits at age 62.

I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.

The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.

President Roosevelt, the author of Social Security, was the first to suggest that, in order to provide for the country's retirement needs, Social Security would need to be supplemented by personal savings accounts.

You cannot go to someone who is 65 or 70 years of age and tell 'em, 'This program that you retired relying on is now being pulled out from underneath you.'

For people who have for been putting their hard-earned money into the system for years, the president's idea would replace their safety net with a risky gamble with no assurance of a stable return of investment.

Part of the middle class promise is that, after a lifetime of hard work, you'll be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Medicare was established to secure that promise.