12.08.11

Sessions Comments On Social Security Votes, Encourages President To Return To Governing

“With no long-term economic plan of any kind, the president has abandoned governing in favor of campaigning. His only ideas are short-term measures and temporary stimulus checks that make the debt worse… no one can disagree that this country, and our beleaguered middle class, would be better off if the president would lay out a long-term plan for sustained job growth and deficit reduction.”

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered the following statement today after voting in opposition to both the Democrat and Republican proposals (S.1944 and S.1931, respectively), to continue the payroll contribution holiday for Social Security.  Both measures failed to proceed:

“The Senate Democrat bill to cancel contributions to the Social Security Trust Fund would increase this year’s deficit by $138 billion. The President and Senate Democrats say that their new tax increase will return the money in about ten years. How much longer can we borrow more money, to spend today, on the promise that it will be paid back in the future?

The Republican proposal, which controls spending elsewhere to pay for the holiday, is vastly more responsible. However, in my view, any continued pension holiday would weaken Social Security. Even the president seems to agree with this: his formal request is for the holiday to end, conveniently, right after the election.

With no long-term economic plan of any kind, the President has abandoned governing in favor of campaigning. His only ideas are short-term measures and temporary stimulus checks that make the debt worse.  The payroll holiday is not a tax cut, but rather eliminates billions in contributions to Americans’ Social Security pension plans. Money must then be taken from other parts of the budget to fill the void. In other words, we will still have to spend $185 billion we don’t have in order to make-up for the cancelled pension payments. Substantively, this is not much different than writing a check to every working American—including high-income earners. It is simply routed through a new hole in Social Security.

People may disagree on restoring payroll contributions. But no one can disagree that this country, and our beleaguered middle class, would be better off if the President would lay out a long-term plan for sustained job growth and deficit reduction.”