Rand Paul Quotes

We obviously have to honor the commitments that have been made to the people who are already retired or near the retirement age. But we need to tell the truth about the fact that when we set the retirement age at age 65 in America, life expectancy was only 62.

Cutting benefits is not the right answer. Raising the retirement age is not the best option.

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 have never favored a Social Security retirement age of 70 nor do I favor one of 68.

Let me tell you exactly what we would do on Social Security. Yes, we'd raise the retirement age two years and phase it in over 25 years; that means we'd raise it one month a year for 25 years when we're all living longer, and living better lives.

The full retirement age is 67 and the lifespan is 80, so when they first conceived Social Security, they didn't think they were going to be paying benefits for 13-15 years. That's one of the reasons why this pyramid scheme isn't working.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

I'm not philosophically opposed to raising the retirement age... I accept the fact that I may have to raise my retirement age for that.

The retirement age needs to be raised. A portion of Social Security ought to be privatized, if not all. And there probably needs to be some means testing. It's a Ponzi scheme that's not sustainable.

The fine print in the President's Social Security proposal is that all present and future workers under age 55 will have their promised retirement benefits cut.

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

It's time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn't 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.

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.

When the social security age was first established as 65, most people didn't live to be that old.

Seventy is old enough. After that there is too much risk.

I think that when it comes to Social Security, all of us want to make sure that our senior citizens can retire with dignity and respect. And everybody has to be open-minded in thinking how do we firm up a system that, in fact, is going to be in difficulty in the coming years.

No one is talking about restructuring Social Security or Medicare for current retirees or for those that are near retirement. For those under 55, the answer is let's talk about it.

Socialist countries throughout the world love to lower retirement ages to make people prematurely dependent on the government. But we should move in the opposite direction. In the long run, indexing retirement to life expectancy will yield enormous revenues to the system, far more than a one-shot increase in the age in the current legislative cycle.

The main thrust of the Social Security reform was to get the benefit structure in line with the realities of the Trust Funds.

If you are advocating full retirement benefits starting at 60, my reaction is the system is already 31 percent underfinanced and can not afford what it's now doing, let alone such a policy change.

One of the most helpful things I introduced (and of very considerable consequence to Canadians) was my ultimate success in persuading my colleagues (after continuing battle)to reduce the qualifying age for aged pensioners from seventy to sixty-five over a five year period.

I would not vote to raise the retirement age to 70 because there are just too many Americans that work hard all their lives and just simply physically couldn't work until they are 70.

Those who want to cut Social Security are prepared to take hostages, manufacture crises, and use scare tactics to undermine the retirement security of Americans.

Who knows? I might retire at the age of 65.

The role we have in work may change over time, but the concept of retirement is not biblical.