It is both wrong and short-sighted to believe that we can better protect our national security interests by ignoring or sidelining human rights.
If national safety - the ability to respond to hurricanes, terrorist attacks, earthquakes - depends on the execution of explicit plans, on soldierly obedience, and on showy security drills, then a decentralized security scheme is useless.
I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments.
We need to secure our southern border. Clearly, the southern border is now a nexus between immigration and national security. It's a sieve.
More young people believe they'll see a U.F.O. than that they'll see their own Social Security benefits.
Currently, more than 4.7 million African Americans receive Social Security benefits, and nearly 8 million people with disabilities depend on Social Security for their daily sustenance.
Our constituents paid into Social Security, and they want it paid back to them when they retire. Cutting Social Security benefits that Americans have earned should always be a last resort.
What I heard was that Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory. He'll have Social Security reform passed, that he'll have tax reform passed, that he'll have conservative judges on the courts.
I think we'll build a consensus for action on Social Security reform which will reduce that long-term unfunded obligation and put the system on a sustainable basis.
The President's budget pays for only six months of the war in Iraq and completely overlooks the transition costs of Social Security reform. The Administration always lied about the cost of the Medicare drug bill.
There is a need for Social Security reform to ensure its stability, and Congress must act.
I do think that Social Security reform needs to be bipartisan, and we are going to have to reach that in this debate at some time before we can find really meaningful reform.
If a country like Chile can fix its social security system, there is no reason a country as great as the United States... can't fix our Social Security system.
I do not believe that the Social Security system is in crisis. The Social Security Administration itself recently reported that the system is able to pay full benefits as they are defined today until at least 2042.
Under the current pay-as-you-go Social Security system, not one person is actually guaranteed benefits.
And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with a subsidy as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.
I do not believe that the Social Security system is in crisis.
I was very concerned that President Bush is still trying to frighten or scare the American people with respect to the condition of the Social Security system.
We are confronting a situation in which the Administration, in my view, is once again manufacturing a crisis. There is no crisis in the Social Security system. The system is not on the verge of bankruptcy.
The administration in my view is once again manufacturing a crisis. There is no crisis in the Social Security system. The system is not on the verge of bankruptcy.
