Keeping a Promise to our Seniors
America made a promise. If you work hard, pay into Social Security and Medicare throughout your career, those benefits will be there when you retire. That's not a government handout—it's an earned benefit that millions of Americans have paid for with every paycheck. I believe we have a moral obligation to keep that promise. For thousands of seniors on Long Island, Social Security is the difference between living with dignity and struggling to make ends meet. Medicare provides the healthcare they've earned after a lifetime of work. We should be strengthening these programs—not looking for ways to cut or privatize them.
Washington's Failure to Act
The greatest threat to Social Security isn't the people who depend on it—it's Washington's failure to act. If Congress continues to kick the can down the road, Social Security's retirement trust fund is projected to become depleted in the next four years. Under current law, that would trigger automatic 22% benefit reductions for millions of retirees who spent their lives paying into the system and depend on their monthly Social Security checks in their golden years. That should never happen.
The leaders in the current MAGA Congress have argued that Social Security, Medicare, and other earned-benefit programs "have to be adjusted and fixed" as part of reducing federal spending. They’re saying the quiet part out loud - they want to privatize these programs as a massive giveaway to the Wall Street hedge funds and insurance companies that fund their campaigns. I believe there's a better way. The solution isn't cutting benefits. The solution is making sure the system remains strong for generations to come.
Strengthen Social Security, Don't Cut it
Today, teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, construction workers, and millions of other Americans pay Social Security payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. But once the 1% of earners making several hundred thousand dollars per year reaches the annual payroll tax cap, they stop paying Social Security taxes on additional wages for the rest of the year. The cap was introduced in 1935 and hasn’t kept pace with the large gains in wealth inequality we have today largely because wages at the very top have grown much faster than wages for everyone else.
I support strengthening Social Security by requiring the highest earners to contribute their fair share so we can protect the benefits seniors have earned. Working families shouldn't carry the entire burden while the wealthiest Americans stop contributing after reaching the payroll tax cap.
Keeping America's promise shouldn't come at the expense of working families—it should come from asking everyone to pay their fair share.
Helping Seniors Age with Dignity
Most Long Islanders want to stay in the communities they've spent a lifetime building. I'll support policies that help seniors remain independent by expanding access to home care, supporting family caregivers, protecting affordable housing options for seniors, improving transportation, and making it easier to access the federal benefits they've earned. Growing older should never mean being forced to leave the place you call home.
What I'll Fight for:
Protect Social Security from benefit cuts and privatization.
Strengthen Social Security by requiring the highest earners to contribute more toward the program's long-term solvency.
Protect, strengthen and expand Medicare.
Protect Social Security and Medicare from political gamesmanship.
Expand home care and support for family caregivers.
Help seniors age in place with dignity and independence.
Provide outstanding constituent services to help seniors access the benefits they've earned.
The Contrast: Garbarino Wants Privatization
While working New Yorkers pay into Social Security and Medicare with every single paycheck, Representative Andrew Garbarino has backed a very different agenda in Washington. Instead of protecting these earned benefits, Garbarino aligns with party leadership that views our social safety net as a bargaining chip for federal budget cuts. His platform opens the door to privatization schemes—like raising the retirement age and shifting public funds into volatile stock accounts or restrictive private health plans—that threaten the lifetime guarantee Long Island retirees built their lives around.
This isn't an accident—it’s driven by corporate influence. Garbarino has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporate PACs representing Wall Street firms, big health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical giants. These corporate backers aren't funding campaigns out of charity; they want access to the trillions of dollars flowing through Social Security and Medicare. Privatizing these programs creates massive management fees for financial firms and record profits for private insurance middlemen, while leaving local seniors to carry all the financial risk.
Long Island seniors shouldn't have to worry about stock market crashes or insurance company denials when they retire. Representative Garbarino has made his choice clear: he answers to the corporate interests funding his campaign rather than the working families he was elected to represent. We need a representative in Washington who refuses to sell out our seniors and will always fight to keep America's promise.