Barbara Mikulski Quotes

For 60 years, Social Security has meant more than an ID number on a tax form; more than a monthly check in the mail. It reflects our deepest values - our respect for our parents and our belief that all Americans deserve to retire with dignity.

I never need to go far if I need a reminder of how important Medicare and Social Security are to Missouri's seniors. My mom, Betty Anne, is one of millions for whom these services provide a reliable safety net. Across the country, these protections are an integral part of sustaining millions of seniors' health and dignity.

Social Security is not a retirement savings plan; it is a social insurance program. It's a contract that says, as a society, we will look out for you and your family when you can no longer work.

Social Security has been effective for 70 years; prior predictions of its demise have been totally overstated.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

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

Most Americans get that there is a need for a safety net in our country, and we support that safety net.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits are unacceptable, and they shouldn’t be put on the table by Democrats for any reason...

Social security is the most successful government program in our nation's history. We are not going to cut social security! We are going to expand social security!

The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation.

Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds.

The automatic stabilizer is unemployment insurance, food stamps, additional coverage of Medicaid.

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.

When I look at Social Security, I consider it the most important social program in the United States, arguably the most successful program in the world.

There's a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day.

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.

I agree with President Roosevelt, and generations since, that American seniors deserve better than poverty.

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.

Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.

Social Security is meant to be - to make sure that no one who's worked hard and played by the rules and paid into the system grows old in poverty in America.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

Social Security is a family insurance program, not an investment scheme.

Social Security is a program that should be strengthened and preserved for future generations.

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