Senior citizens living on Social Security are not going to want to hear that General Dynamics was not subject to cuts because of the legalization of multiyear procurement or that a Federal dam receives full funding because we could not abrogate contracts. To the senior citizens of this country, Social Security is as important as any other contract we might hold with defense contractors or anyone else. Finally, when we reorganized the Social Security system 2 years ago we made a commitment that the system would be fixed, and we would not revisit it. By excluding Social Security we are telling the American public that there is one sector of the economy that is exempt from all budget cuts. These people will receive their full COLA while programs such as food stamps and all other COLA's face a reduction in automatic increases.
Senior citizens are willing to contribute to deficit reduction.
We should not underestimate the patriotism of our senior citizens. We should point out that reducing COLA's does not reduce benefits. This amendment would not allow Social Security COLA's to be reduced by more than 3 percentage points, even if all the other automatic increases would be reduced by a greater percentage. We reject the argument that defense spending is not covered under Gramm-Rudman. As time passes more defense contracts will pass under Gramm-Rudman.