Our response:
Actually Congressman, the promise (it's actually a legal obligation) is that Washington will pay back the billions of dollars contributed by Americans throughout their working lifetimes and borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund over the past decade by Congress. The full faith and credit of the United States government has been sound and secure enough for generations; however, some in Congress now hope to break that promise, renege on the federal government's obligation to pay back the Trust Fund--while funding more tax cuts for the wealthy.
Claiming that many Americans don't really need a social safety net is just more divide and conquer politics designed to make Social Security and Medicare sound like welfare. It also ignores the fiscal reality that nearly one in five grandparent-caregivers are living below the poverty line, and almost half have incomes between one and three times the poverty level.