🔰Cory Booker Senate speech: Elizabeth Warren | FOX 7 Austin

Thank you. I am very grateful to the Senator from New Jersey for coming to the floor for such an extended period of time to give voice to all of those around this country whose voices evidently are not heard by the Republicans in the United States Congress. And I wanted to ask a question for the 73 million people who are beneficiaries of the social security system and for their families, for the people whose grandma is getting social security, for the people whose cousin, whose dad died, who is getting social security benefits, about what's happening right now between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, our current co-presidents, and what they're trying to do to the social security system. So I start this question with just a basic observation. Social security is not charity. It is not something we give away to those who are less fortunate and we do this out of the goodness of our hearts. Social security is a contract that people who work in America pay into the system for all of their working lives and when the time comes that they retire or something happens to them and they are not able to do that work, that they can count on the social security system and the payments that they are legally entitled to. I want to underscore here legally. Now if America wanted to change that contract, the place they have to go is right here to Congress. They have to come to the United States Senate or they have to go to the House of Representatives and they have to say, we actually want to change benefits for social security recipients. And by the way, that has happened dozens and dozens of times in our history up through the late 1980s where we made adjustments in the social security benefits. For example, for the fact that people lived longer, for the fact that people worked longer, and so we made minor adjustments in the system. We also made adjustments to make sure that there were cost of living changes in how much social security would pay out. So anyone who wants to change the benefits that people are legally entitled to has to come here to Congress and make that happen. But it appears that Elon Musk and Donald Trump have tried to figure out an end run. And the end run is to say, okay, we can't directly change benefits, but what we can do is we can effectively cut off benefits. Now, how can they do that? Well, one way is fire all the people who help people get their social security benefits. And think of it this way. Someone who wants to collect social security, let's just say at age 66, they decide, okay, I'm ready. It's time for me to retire, I can't do this anymore. I want to collect my social security benefits. And they try to fill out the form. Turns out it gets rejected. There's a number off somewhere in the system. Somebody's got a confusion over what the name is or where somebody worked or an employer from decades back failed to fill out the right form. So now there's a problem in the system. So what does the person do? Well, first they might try calling. But if you fire the people who answered the phones, that's not going to work. Okay, so what's the next thing you do? You go to your local social security office. Oh, but if they close the social security office near you, that's not going to work. So what do you do? You go to the social security office that you can find. Two hours away, three hours away, four hours away. Finally, get to that social security office. And when you get there, if they fired most of the people, you may encounter, what, two people working the desk to help straighten out problems and a line that's 50 people long. By the way, these come from real stories. People are telling what's happening out there. So by the time the day is over, our example here hasn't even made it to the front of the line. So doesn't get the question answered, doesn't get the problem resolved. Has to go back home again, has to find somebody who can maybe take him to the social security office that's hours away and start this process over and over and over. If this person, let's just say for example, takes three months to get this problem ultimately resolved by the social security administration, they don't get the money. That money is lost. It just simply is gone. They do not get the money they are legally entitled to, and they have no right to go back and collect it, even pointing out that it was social security's error. So failure to correct these errors or to give people an opportunity to correct these errors is effectively the same as having cut their benefits. And you do that for 1% of the people, drive up your error rate. You do that for 5% of the people. You do that for 10% of the folks who are getting social security, and man, those cuts really start to add up. They really start to add up for the people whose benefits are cut. They really start to add up for Donald Trump and for Elon Musk. But let's look at another possibility here, and that is just simply delay. Checks don't go out on time. When checks don't go out on time, then the promise that people relied on, that that check would come on the third of the month. That's what they count on for rent. That's what they count on to put groceries on the table. That's what they count on to support themselves. It's gone. So maybe they'll get the check next month. Another billionaire Republican, Howard Ludnick, said don't worry about it. His mother-in-law would simply count on the fact that they'd straighten the problem out, and maybe next month she would get her payment. I suppose if your son-in-law is a billionaire, you can count on the fact that somebody will make sure your rent gets covered and groceries on the table. But for the 70 million Americans relying on that check coming in every month, not so clear what you're going to do. So what do you do? Do you borrow money to make rent? Do you call on relatives if you've got them? Who do you go to to be able to make it to the end of this month, and if the problem persists, to the next month and the next month? Where do you go? That is, in my view, as much a benefit cut as Congress having voted to say we're just going to give a 10% across-the-board cut to everyone who receives Social Security benefits. There are a lot of ways to cut benefits, and breaking your promise to 73 million Americans is a benefit cut. It is not a legal benefit cut, but it is an effective benefit cut, and I admire the senator from New Jersey for being here today to speak out for those Americans who face these kinds of cuts and have no recourse. I admire him for standing up and saying to the Republicans who won't go do town halls, who won't go out and meet with these people and listen to them, listen to their concerns, listen to their fears, listen to their stories about what happens as thousands and thousands more Social Security employees are fired, and correcting problems, straightening out your benefits gets harder and more out of reach for more and more Americans. That is what we face right now. So the question that I want to pose to the senator from New Jersey is this. At a time when Donald Trump and Elon Musk are looking for an indirect way to cut Social Security benefits, and let's just pause here if I can to say why. Why go out of your way to cut Social Security benefits? Come on now. 73 million Americans rely on this. This has been the backbone of America's promise to its own people that you did the work, you put in the money, and now you're entitled to the benefit on the other side. Why are they doing this? Because they want to reduce the amount of money that is available for Social Security and instead take that money over so that they can advance tax cuts for billionaires and billionaire corporations. They're just trying to grease the skids here for the billionaires to get even richer and ask the 73 million Americans who rely on Social Security to pay for it out of their own hides. So the question I have for the senator from New Jersey is when Elon Musk and Donald Trump are determined to try to use a backdoor way to cut Social Security benefits, A, are they acting legally, and B, how do we put a stop to this?