Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 106th Congress, Second Session, Volume 146, Part 3 Page: 3,006
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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE
March 21, 2000
and 70 years of age, who want to be
able to sustain themselves, who want
to be able to help their families, who
want to be able to remain independent
and not dependent on Government. Yet
Government has this rather onerous
discriminatory effect on their work
habits. It says if you earn money, we
are going to take money away from
what you have previously earned as a
Social Security benefit.
The earnings test is a misguided and
outdated relic of a time when jobs were
scarce, unemployment was high, when
people did not live as long and healthy
lives as they do today. It is clearly a
disincentive for seniors to work. By
telling seniors if they work hard and
earn money, we will just take it away
from them or we will deduct it from
their Social Security, we are saying:
Seniors need not apply; seniors need
not aspire to a better life; seniors need
not expect to remain independent-all
of which are the wrong statements for
us to be making to our seniors.
There are a great number of seniors
who are working anyhow and paying a
penalty for working. It seems strange
that in a country that needs workers,
we are asking people to pay a high pen-
alty for working: 1.2 million working
seniors are penalized now; 17,523 work-
ing seniors in Missouri suffer losses in
their Social Security as a result of
their industry, their willingness to
work. But the actual number of seniors
affected by this pernicious idea of dis-
criminating against seniors in the
workplace is much greater than this 1.2
million nationwide or 17,523 in the
State of Missouri. There are millions of
seniors who choose not to work or
choose to work only a small amount
because they don't want to work in
such a way that it will erode, undercut,
undermine, or diminish their Social
Security income.
Keeping seniors out of our workforce
has a serious consequence. It is against
our best interest to remove the kinds
of things seniors bring to the work-
force. They are great workers. They
are skilled workers. They are workers
of value and experience. The current
unemployment rate of 4 percent indi-
cates to us that we need skilled and ex-
perienced workers. Seniors are highly
valuable members of the workforce.
Their continuing contributions are cru-
cial. The only limit to what they have
to offer is the earnings limit. We
should not limit what good people can
offer to this country.
I have spent quite a bit of time in my
home State of Missouri talking with
constituents. There are real life exam-
ples. Beverly Paxton from Belton, MO,
who represents the Green Thumb orga-
nization, says hundreds of seniors
would be eager to work without the
earnings test. Furthermore, some don't
try to work for fear that the Social Se-
curity Administration might take ben-
efits away. Seniors don't want to haveto visit a CPA to find out whether if
they go to work they will lose benefits
or be taxed at such a high rate that
working will actually end up costing
them money.
Many more limit their hours to avoid
the Social Security earnings test and
its application which would result in
the deduction of Social Security bene-
fits. A manufacturer from Belton, MO,
said to me: Seniors work until they
reach the income limit. Then they tell
the employer: I won't be here next
week; I will see you next January.
Well, what does this do to our situa-
tion where we want people to be able to
work with continuity and our manufac-
turers and our enterprises to be able to
provide service with continuity?
Here we have an employer who is left
in the lurch, having to absorb training
costs or heavy overtime costs because
we have said to seniors: You cannot
work on a regular basis if that regular
basis carries you over the income
limit. These decisions of people work-
ing for quite a bit of time and then pre-
cipitously dropping off or being under-
employed by not working very much
throughout the entire year are based
on the arbitrary earnings test limit of
the Social Security Administration
which says if you pass a certain limit,
we will start deducting from your So-
cial Security check. Even when seniors
work around the test, they suffer unex-
pected costs.
C.D. Clark from Florissant, MO, had
earned $25,000 before trying to limit
earnings to protect himself from the
test. He had planned to work only 8
months so his Social Security benefits
would not be cut; he would get himself
down under the limit. The Social Secu-
rity Administration, however, assumed
he would earn the same amount, the
$25,000 he had earned previously, and
withheld his Social Security checks
from January through March of this
year. When Mr. Clark complained to
the Social Security Administration
that he had not reached the income
limit of $17,000, he was told: We like to
get our money up front-as if Social
Security was their money, as if it were
not a benefit for which Mr. Clark had
paid years and years of taxes.
Not only do we find people harmed fi-
nancially, but seniors express to me
over and over again that their physical
and mental well-being is pinned upon
their ability to keep working. In St.
Joseph, MO, working is a mental
health issue. Seniors who don't work
often lose their sense of self-worth.
This point was not only made to me in
my visit to St. Joseph but across the
State. In Joplin, for example, I was
given the same information.
To the extent that the earnings test
keeps as many as 200,000 Missouri sen-
iors from working, it harms the mental
well-being of those 200,000 Missouri sen-
iors who would like to be active. Over
and over again, this was a refrain Iheard from seniors: We want to work;
we want to be active; we need to be.
The earnings test can threaten lives
in other ways as well. Lois Murphy of
St. Louis is 65 and works part-time as
a registered nurse in the operating
room at St. John's Mercy Medical Cen-
ter. The hospital suffers from a labor
shortage and needs help from women
like Mrs. Murphy who are experienced,
willing, and dedicated to work. She
limits her hours because of the earn-
ings limit. This takes a skilled, experi-
enced, and needed worker out of the
hospital, out of the capacity of caring
for other individuals.
Mrs. Murphy wrote to me:
The $17,000 limit a person could earn plus
the small Social Security check is not
enough tolive comfortably and enjoy your
senior years.
Mrs. Murphy neatly summarized this
issue in one simple sentence:
I think if a senior citizen at age 65 is will-
ing to work, they should be able to earn a lot
more or not have a limit.
Well, I believe Mrs. Murphy is right.
Seniors should have the freedom to
earn if they choose. The problem is
that they don't have that choice. We
must send the earnings test into retire-
ment. We should retire the earnings
test, not force the retirement of our
senior citizens.
One of the business owners and oper-
ators I talked to put it this way: Sen-
iors are able to work pretty aggres-
sively through most of the year until
they get up to the brink of the Christ-
mas season when they really are need-
ed. Then when they are intensely need-
ed, the test kicks in and they have to
check out.
Many seniors who want to work don't
work because of the costs imposed by
the earnings test. Take, for example, a
senior in the 28-percent tax bracket.
The earnings test kicks in. One out of
every $3 is taken away from Social Se-
curity. That turns out to be another
tax of roughly 33 percent.
Then if you add the 7.65-percent So-
cial Security tax on the people, and a
State income tax of, say, 6 percent, you
get up to a 74- to 80-percent combined
tax load on a working senior citizen. If
they have any expenses of going to and
from work, or wardrobe expenses asso-
ciated with work, it could well be that
the senior citizen actually loses
money. The Government is so aggres-
sive in reducing their ability to earn.
The earnings test is pernicious and dis-
criminatory toward seniors.
This is something we ought to ad-
dress. I am delighted that the House
has done so and that the President has
signaled his agreement with what the
House has done. I have been working
on this since I came to the Senate in
1995. I voted to substantially increase
the limit in 1997. I called for the elimi-
nation of the test and cosponsored leg-
islation that would get rid of the test.
This year, I have introduced legisla-
tion that would eliminate the test. My3006
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United States. Congress. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 106th Congress, Second Session, Volume 146, Part 3, book, April 2000; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc31037/m1/3/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.