Kenneth Langone Quotes

You know, Floridians, we've paid into Social Security. Like a lot of other government programs, we sent money to D.C. We expect to get that money back. We expect that our Social Security is real. So, we have to fix Social Security.

It has to have a payroll tax that's dedicated to Social Security. The Social Security tax has been very successful over the years in raising almost all of our elderly citizens out of poverty.

It's hard to exaggerate the importance of preserving the financial integrity of Social Security.

I never sought to privatize Social Security.

Social Security, for example - I'm 43. I've paid into the system. You know what? That money has been stolen from me. I know that my parents who are on Social Security - they've got to continue to receive it. They're dependent on it. It is their primary source of income.

The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.

We ought to deal with Social Security in a separate conversation that is not part of deficit reduction.

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

We do ourselves a disservice when some of us cave to the myth that Social Security somehow drives the deficit.

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.

I stand with the millions of seniors and working people who depend on Social Security and who expect the money they put in to be there for them when they retire.

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

We must work to stabilize Social Security. We must not gamble with our nation's social insurance program, one of our most popular and effective federal programs that has remained dependable and stable for the past 70 years.

There is a lot of room for improvement in Social Security. We owe our children the most financially sound system possible. They will have paid into it their entire working lives. They deserve to be protected by it. for our children and grandchildren.

We must work together to save and strengthen Social Security not just for my father's generation but also for my daughters' generation.

We need to strengthen and save Social Security for today's workers. If we don't act now, this system, born out of the New Deal, will become a bad deal.

You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.

Today, I'm 60, I'm not married, I don't have any kids. I would give up some Social Security to save a system that Americans are going to depend on now and in the future.

I don't support getting rid of Social Security.

Our Hispanic community needs to understand how important the Social Security system is for not only its retired citizens, but also its disabled workers.

Under the current pay-as-you-go Social Security system, not one person is actually guaranteed benefits.

I know of no serious proposals that would change the way Social Security operates for today's seniors.

Our country also hungers for leadership to ensure the long-term survival of our Social Security system. With 70 million baby boomers in this country on the verge of retirement, we need to take action to shore up the system.

Let me be clear, the discussions about Social Security are not about the retirement security of those Americans who are 55 or older - the Social Security system for those folks 55 and over will not change in any way shape of form - no ifs, ands, or buts.

A lifetime single worker really gets a horrid deal from Social Security. The return on average is less than 0.5 percent. These workers would be nearly better off stuffing their payroll tax dollars under a mattress.