October 5, 1972
Page 33882
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I compliment the distinguished Senator from Minnesota for offering this amendment. I have listened to the debate. I think the issues have been eloquently and fairly covered. I suspect, from the examples that each of these Senators has brought to the attention of the Senate, as well as the examples which exist in my own State, that what we are talking about are not isolated cases. We are talking about the results of this increase that spreads across the country and hits tens of thousands of elderly people.
Three basic points have been made this morning that bear repeating. First of all, it was the intent of the Congress to increase the income of these elderly people. The increase resulted, in many instances, in a decrease. The second point that needs to be made clear is the point raised by the distinguished junior Senator from Minnesota, namely that these people are given no choice as to whether they will get the benefit of an increase that results in a net decrease. I think that is unconscionable.
I would then like to touch upon the other point. It is said that this amendment will be opposed, and I gather that it will be opposed because of the legislative and statutory action and the jurisdictional problems involved.
While we preoccupy ourselves with this problem of legislative neatness and work out all the entangled jurisdictional lines that result from the social security increase, thousands of elderly people will suffer. That was not the intent of Congress. Why do we not act together to straighten out these tangled legal and jurisdictional lines with a view to doing that which was expressed by the Senator from Minnesota. We need to take all possible steps to assure justice for the elderly who have been disillusioned by the action of a generous Congress.
The article in the New York Times to which the Senator referred has this statement:
"This is a form of psychological deceit practiced upon senior citizens," said C. Christopher Brown, head of the law reform unit of the Baltimore Legal Aid Bureau. "The government is giving with one hand and taking away with the other."
Yesterday I visited briefly in a community center in Buffalo, N.Y., where I spoke with many senior citizens. All of them looked forward to the social security increase which Congress has legislated. Many of them will now be bitterly disillusioned by the consequences of that generous act of the Congress. I say it is the responsibility of Congress to right this injustice which has been unwittingly and unintentionally visited upon so many thousands of our elderly citizens.
Mr. BROOKE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. BROOKE. Mr. President, we are not talking about welfare recipients. We are talking about people who have worked all of their lives and put aside some little portion of their income as savings in the hope that as they got older they would be able to enjoy some of the necessities of life. They had no idea that we could be in a period of inflation, as we are at present.
What has happened is that as prices have increased, the cost of food, rent, clothing, and other things has escalated, while at the same time the value of a dollar has gone down. So the people who are most affected by this are those who are living on fixed incomes, mainly social security, pensions, and the rest.
So we in Congress recognized that we did not have any way to provide a built-in cast-of-living increase. So we finally came up with a 20-percent increase in social security. These people had every reason to believe that if they got a 20-percent increase in social security, it would mean that they would have a little more money to pay for the increase in rent, food, clothing, and the other things.
These people never really get the luxuries of life, because they have precious few, if any, luxuries of life. They are barely living.
We come along and say, "All right. We will give you a 20-percent increase in social security. However, at the same time we will increase your rent and cut back on the other benefits that you can possibly get." As has been well pointed out time and time again, this results in a net loss rather than in any increase.
I am sure that when the junior Senator from Minnesota suggested that he was even thinking of an amendment which would give them an opportunity to accept or reject the 20-percent increase, he thought it would be a good suggestion, because at least those who would lose by virtue of receiving a 20-percent increase could reject it. That suggestion was not facetious at all. It makes a lot of sense. Unless we correct these inequities, we are compounding the problem for the very people that we have been trying to help by the 20-percent increase. Is that not basically what this is about, no more, and no less?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, what we have done – unwittingly as I said before – is not to realize that there will be an inflationary pressure that will now explode because of this increase and there will be an increase in the cost of housing and food, against which we were hoping to insulate them by our action. The Senator is so right. I can see that there is not a neat legislative answer to the problem. However, there is an answer, and that answer is the amendment of the Senator from Minnesota.