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Congressional Corner from Representative Tom Tancredo: Giving Away Our Social Security?
 By Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) Over the past year, the Bush Administration has been negotiating a “Totalization Agreement” with Mexico. Haven’t heard anything about it? Well, you need to know about it because the White House may be about to give away some of your retirement benefits.
Citizens already have justifiable concerns about whether the U.S. Social Security system will be able to provide benefits for our elderly when the baby-boomers retire. Will there be enough money coming into the pot to take care of all of Social Security beneficiaries? Some experts predict that the Social Security fund will be depleted within the next two decades as the proportion of elderly in the U.S. population swells.
Instead of trying to figure out how to continue to provide for our own elderly, our government wants to reward not just Mexican workers who came here legally and paid into the system, but also those Mexicans who entered and worked here illegally. In fact, the Administration wants to reward them with $345 billion of our Social Security monies by signing a Totalization Agreement with Mexico.
Totalization agreements are not a new idea. The United States has entered into 20 other such agreements, mostly with European countries. These agreements are designed to coordinate the collection of payroll taxes and the payment of benefits under each country’s social security system for legal workers who split their careers between the two countries. This makes sense because, in the absence of a Totalization Agreement, a worker who is sent to a foreign country by his own company must contribute to the social security systems of both countries, resulting in dual Social Security coverage and taxation based on the same earnings.
Under the existing 20 agreements, about $15 million is paid each month to some 94,000 recipients. Now, however, the Administration is quietly negotiating with our southern neighbor to give Social Security benefits to an estimated 5.5 million Mexican nationals working in the United States. Of that 5.5 million, about 76 percent are working and residing here illegally. Why would we want to reward people for breaking our laws? Why would we sell out our own citizens for illegal Mexican aliens?
The House Ways and Means and Judiciary Committees were notified of these talks only when the media broke the story in December of last year. Recognizing the huge potential costs, they requested that both the Government Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office review this possible agreement. This has helped stall the negotiation process, but we are not in the clear yet. The Administration still is pushing for an agreement to be hammered out.
I believe that the U.S. government’s job is to ensure that the interests of American citizens are protected. Far too often, though, the best interests of Americans are ignored because citizens don’t hold their elected officials accountable.
I certainly will do my part to oppose any agreement that gives your Social Security benefits to illegal aliens, but I cannot do it alone. I urge all of you to make sure that your elected representatives know that you oppose any Totalization Agreement that rewards illegal aliens with Social Security benefits and that you expect them to protect Americans’ best interests. ___________________________________________________
To learn the latest status of this agreement and other issues of importance to seniors, call TSCL’s Washington Weekly Hotline at 800-333-8725. Or go to http://www.tscl.org. December 2003
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