 I am so pleased to accept your endorsement. For whatever reason, media does not talk a lot about one of the most serious crises facing this country. And that is the plight of millions of seniors, disabled vets, and folks with disability. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We have seen in recent years a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires. But at the same time, millions of seniors, disabled veterans, and people with disabilities are struggling to try to survive on $11,000, $12,000, $13,000 a year. And you know what? You cannot survive on $11,000, $12,000, $13,000 a year. Can't be done. You can't pay for the healthcare that you need. You can't pay for the prescription drugs you need. You can't heat your home in the winter. You can't buy the food you need if you are living on $11,000 or $12,000 a year. Now in the midst of that, many of my Republican colleagues have a brilliant idea. They think that while millions of seniors are struggling to survive on inadequate social security funding and benefits, they think we should either privatize social security or make massive cuts to social security. Now can you imagine somebody talking about cutting social security on people who are trying to get by on $11,000 or $12,000 a year? That is crazy. That is unconscionable and that is wrong. We will not allow that to happen. So this is what I say to my Republican colleagues in the Senate and the House. No, you're not going to cut social security. You are going to expand social security benefits. A great nation is judged not by how many millionaires and billionaires it has. It is judged by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us. Our parents and our grandparents raised us. They built this country. We are not going to turn our backs on them. Now the simplest and most straightforward way to deal with social security today is a very, very simple principle. And that is to understand that right now we have somebody making $5 million a year. Somebody making $118,000 a year. They are both contributing the same amount into the Social Security Trust Fund. If you lift that cap, and you don't have to start at $118,000, you can start at $250,000 and go up from there and have people, $250,000 or more, paying the same percentage of their incomes in social security tax as somebody making $40,000 a year, you can extend the life of social security from 19 years to 58 years. Number two, you can significantly raise benefits for seniors and disabled vets who are earning less than $16,000 a year. We expand benefits by $1,300 every year. No small thing. Second of all, there has been this absurd idea called a chain CPI. You don't know what a chain CPI is. What it is is an effort to cut social security by claiming that the cost of living adjustments that seniors receive are too high. Anybody here know what the cola that seniors receive this year is? Zero. Now, when you get a zero cola increase, how is that too high? How do you cut it? It's an absurd idea. So what we are going to do is have a segregated index for seniors really looking at what seniors expenditures are which are disproportionately higher for healthcare and prescription drugs, meaning they need more than general inflation accounts for. So, furthermore, let me say this, we are not going to strangle social security administration. We are not going to continue to close down field offices, cut back on workers. Seniors and disabled vets deserve to have the highest quality service. When they have a problem, when they have a question, they deserve a timely answer. And that means we need to have a well-staffed, well-trained workforce in social security. First point that I want to make, which is a parallel issue, many of our seniors are struggling with the high cost of prescription drugs. And I have a long history of taking on the pharmaceutical industry, and together we are going to end the rip-off of the American people by the drug companies who are charging us outrageously high prices. And lastly, I want to acknowledge the presence of my dear friend, somebody who I have known from the day that I was elected to Congress, Marcy Captor of Ohio, one of the great members of the United States Congress. Thank you all, thank you all very, very much. And let me just thank all of you who are working for the Social Security Administration. I know that these are hard times. And I know that you are aware that every day there are people in Congress who want to make your life more difficult in terms of your ability to provide quality services to the people that we represent. So I thank you so much for hanging in there, and I very much appreciate your support today.