During Thursday's town hall, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) discussed the potential GOP push to cut Medicare and Medicaid through the Social Security program.
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00:00All right, well, I've got my first question here, and so what I'd like to do is I'm going
00:14to call on you, and if you would just stand where you are.
00:18One of the staffers will bring you a microphone, and then you may ask the congressman your
00:23question.
00:24Diane Aiken from Somerton has the first question.
00:30Is Diane here?
00:35Diane, you're not here?
00:37Where is she?
00:39I see somebody pointing back there, but I still don't see Diane.
00:50All the cards are not collected.
00:51Okay, somebody just grab all the cards for me, please, real quick.
01:04Well, congressman, while they're doing that, Diane asked a question wanting you to comment,
01:10please, on the status of Social Security and Medicaid.
01:16Well, thank you very, very much for that question.
01:18I was hoping that question would come early in the evening.
01:24Social Security has been around since the 1930s.
01:29It's about 80 years old.
01:32Social Security is not a gift.
01:34You pay into it.
01:35I started working on a job, delivering pharmaceuticals for, some of you may remember, a little drug store in Sumter called Ellis Pharmacy.
01:57I delivered pharmaceuticals for Ellis Pharmacy.
02:01I was around 14 years old.
02:03I started paying Social Security then.
02:05So you subtract that from soon to be 75, so you know how long I've been paying into Social Security.
02:15And many of you have been paying into Social Security just as long.
02:20It is a trust fund.
02:22And it's been invested and it's run by the government on your behalf.
02:27Several years ago, someone tried to, George W. Bush, made a move to privatize Social Security.
02:35And the interest at that time on a lot of people was to put all the Social Security money in onto Wall Street.
02:46And if you all remember, about a year after that attempt was made, maybe more than a year, I don't remember the exact amount of time,
02:55a guy named Madoff, was doing a lot of investing of people's money on Wall Street.
03:07And true to his name, he made off with a lot of people's money.
03:13So, Social Security, and I want to say this very strongly.
03:22You just heard the so-called director of the, of what he calls himself, the Government Office of Efficiency.
03:37Well, let me say this about Social Security.
03:39It is a very effective program.
03:49And when people tell you they want to run government like a business, stay away from them.
04:00Because businesses exist to make a profit.
04:04Businesses cannot exist unless it makes a profit.
04:13Government exists to provide service.
04:18That's what government is there for.
04:22We call it the Veterans Service Organizations.
04:27To serve veterans.
04:29Social Security is a program started by Franklin Roosevelt.
04:38And when it started, all of the history will show, just look it up,
04:46around over 80% of senior citizens in this country were living in poverty.
04:5680%.
05:00Social Security went into effect and it lifted all but around 10% of them out of poverty.
05:11And people say that Social Security is the most effective poverty program ever created.
05:21However, Elon Musk made the public statement that Social Security is a big Ponzi scheme.
05:35And they would love to get their mittens on to the Social Security Trust Fund.
05:45And someone will make billions on Wall Street, invest in that trust fund.
05:53And take a chance on somebody else who will not make off with your money.
05:59So Social Security is safe for now.
06:06But why do I have a problem?
06:09It's because I know that Medicare is run by Social Security.
06:17And Medicare and Medicare and Medicaid have been, the proposal has been made that $800 million billion dollars is going to be cut out of the next budget.
06:44And where is that money going to come from?
06:49There is no place in the government to get that money unless they go after Medicare and Medicaid.
06:59And that's why we are fighting.
07:04Now, to their credit, I have not read the letter, nor have I read the 12 names that are supposed to be on the letter.
07:13But I understand that 12 of my Republican colleagues have now written a letter that they made public today that they are not, or something to the effect, they don't think they can vote to cut Medicaid and Medicare.
07:31Yeah, I hope that's correct.
07:38So I think the program is safe for now.
07:41But let me say a couple other things about Social Security.
07:43I get a little upset when I hear people making the argument, saying to young people, that Social Security is not going to be there for you.
07:54Well, let me tell you, every young person in here tonight, Social Security is there for you right now.
08:01There's a big part of Social Security that's called Survivor's Aid.
08:05So this thing that you've got to wait until you're 62 or 65 to get Social Security.
08:35Social Security is not true.
08:38It's there for you right now.
08:40But there's another part of Social Security that is there for you right now.
08:44If we did not have Social Security, if we did not have it, or something became true to it, who takes care of your mother or your father or your grandparents when they're no longer productive,
09:02when many of them are like me, every now and then in the morning, I feel something I've never felt before.
09:16And many of them, if they did not have Social Security, would be your problem.
09:24Social Security is there for you right now.
09:29So don't let people divide your families by saying to you, you should not support a program for your parents and grandparents,
09:38that that program would not be there for you.
09:41It will be there for you because it's there for you right now.
09:45So let's not be selfish about this.
09:47Let's think about what Social Security and Medicaid is all about.
09:51Here's the final thing I want to say about Medicaid.
09:56Anybody here got a, I'm not going to ask you to raise hands, this is a rhetorical question.
10:02A parent, a grandparent, a family member is getting nursing home care?
10:10Medicaid.
10:11If they're getting nursing home care, Medicaid is where nursing home care is.
10:21Get rid of Social Security and put the nursing homes in mothballs.
10:30And then what happens to your family?
10:31When you've got a parent or a grandparent in need of nursing home care.
10:39So let's not let these people divide families the way they seem to want to.
10:46Because these programs are put in place for the express purpose of allowing people to live out their golden years
10:54with some modicum of dignity.
11:00That's what it's all about.