Pelosi on 90th Anniversary of Social Security: “We Will Not Let Them Privatize It.”
San Francisco — Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi joined seniors, disability advocates and community leaders at the George W. Davis Senior Center to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Social Security.
Pelosi joined House Democrats across America in demanding Donald Trump stop gutting the Social Security Administration (SSA) and do more to protect the hard-earned Social Security benefits of the American people.
In Congress, House Democrats have been out in full force meeting with Social Security Recipients and holding hearings featuring featuring testimony from SSA workers and former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley to shed light on Donald Trump’s attacks on these benefits.
More background information on how the Trump Administration’s actions are affecting Social Security recipients HERE.
View and download photos from the Speaker Emerita's event HERE.
Watch the full event HERE.
Read excerpts of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's remarks below:
Speaker Emerita Pelosi. When Franklin Roosevelt signed [the Social Security Act,] he said, 'There is no tragedy in growing old—but there is tragedy in growing old without means of support.'
With that, he signed the bill that really has brought so much to so many families in our country. But at the time, Republicans opposed the bill. Not to talk politics, but history.
And they said it was going to hurt people, lose jobs. They just went on and on about all the terrible things that Social Security would do. But of course, it has not done that. It has done what it intended to do.
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Sad to say, this just in the Big, Horrible Bill that the Republicans have put forth, they have something called the Trump account, and the Secretary of the Treasury said the other day that 'this is a backdoor way to privatize Social Security.'
There they go again. You were there for the fight that we had in 2005 against that Republican effort to privatize Social Security. We won that fight.
I have great respect for President Bush. I think he’s a patriotic American, but I disagreed with him on this. He said, 'You keep telling people I want to privatize Social Security. I only want to *partially* privatize Social Security.'
I said, 'Mr. President, that’s good enough for me.'
That’s the case we made against their own initiative. We then won the election and took control of Congress. The first time we had won since 1992.
But it was Social Security that brought us home in the House. And now again, they’re saying this is a backdoor way to privatize it. We will not let them do that.
But they have tried to weaken it. The President is saying 'I made it stronger' in some kind of speech in the White House.
The fact is, they are firing people. They’re cutting off phone service. We’re getting terrible reports in our office about people having to wait seven hours when calling in, in some cases.
If you’re affecting the technology, the telephone, the personnel, and the rest—closing offices—you are not strengthening Social Security.
So we're not here to do anything but strengthen it ourselves and to celebrate what it has done.
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A pillar of stability—Social Security. A pillar of health care and financial security in Medicare and Medicaid, which are, of course, under threat now.
The Affordable Care Act has strengthened all of that. But today, we go back to the beginning, because the rest would not have happened without Social Security.
It’s not just for seniors—it’s for people with disabilities. Cathy, thank you for sharing your beautiful story. We hear that again and again. How families lose their dad and the family survives under Social Security.
It is a great initiative, and now it is a great day to celebrate it. We’re going to hear from some very special guests. Before that, let me read another quote from Franklin Roosevelt.
He said this when signing it: 'We have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average person and to their families against the loss of their job and against poverty-ridden old age.' That was his statement on August 14, 1935.
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Now again, we’re celebrating. We’re going to have cake. We’re going to chat with each other, have fun. But we have to know that there are those who do not share our enthusiasm for this.
The current President says Social Security is a ‘scam.’ Others in his crowd have called it a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ And now they go, on the day of the anniversary, and start saying, 'Oh, I did this and I did that.'
No—you didn’t. You didn’t.
But it is, them's fighting words when they say those kinds of things, and the most important thing to counter it is the mobilization of people outside.
We can talk about policy—okay, that’s our fight—and we can talk about politics, but the mobilization of people coming together to say, 'No, that’s not the way.'
This is a cultural change in our country, for them to diminish Social Security. We simply will not let that happen.
Instead, we are going to celebrate Social Security, strengthen Social Security and we’re going to do so by listening to all of you and your stories.