John Thune Quotes

Social Security may be the most beloved of all the government's programs, partly because it requires so little thinking. You pay taxes while you work, then you and your spouse collect until you die.

When I look at Social Security, I consider it the most important social program in the United States, arguably the most successful program in the world.

I want to protect and preserve social security and Medicare.

Social Security was always supposed to be basically in theory an insurance program where you pay in and then you get out.

Social Security is a family insurance program, not an investment scheme.

Social Security is the widest accepted contract in our society.

Social Security is unequivocally the one contract the country is overwhelmingly in favor of.

The Social Security System is the one great social policy achievement of the twentieth century.

Social Security works better than any other program in the world. Why dismantle it now?

Social Security and Medicare are among the best things about America.

What's lost in this whole debate, unfortunately, is that Social Security is not a giveaway where we take money to give to other people. It's a contract with the government... that's worked for 75 years. It's the most successful government program that we've ever had.

To me, it is clear that the Social Security program is constitutional.

Social Security is a tax.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

We all know that Social Security is one of this country's greatest success stories in the 20th century.

I think every program needs to stand the sunshine of righteous scrutiny. Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare.

Social Security has been effective for 70 years; prior predictions of its demise have been totally overstated.

Part of the middle class promise is that, after a lifetime of hard work, you'll be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Medicare was established to secure that promise.

The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements.

Most of my folks back home think Social Security and Medicare are sacred commitments stronger than the strongest contract. And yet if you look at the details here in Washington, they're not even promises. They're scheduled benefits. I think we need to do all that we can to make sure those benefits are real.

Germany, I think, was first to substitute a Social Security program for its elderly based on this premise, that is, that we would tax workers to pay retirement benefits for those retired.

Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.

The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.

Social Security and Medicare represent promises made and we must keep these commitments.

You do not have to cut finds from the elderly sick and still keep the yacht subsidy;