Sample Testimony from Montana #14

Written Testimony graciously provided by the COS Montana Team

Attachment: 4718/COS_Testimony_2025_The_Fiscal_Threat_Comes_Home.pdf

Mr. Chairman

In spite of another election that has promised change, the three-ring circus remains up and running in our
Congress. This is not the Greatest Show on Earth. It is the Most Embarrassing Show on earth.

It features such attractions as the Continuing Resolution, the so-called Reconciliation process and the
ever-popular Congressional Earmark. All these sideshows have done is blow up our debt to scary levels
and wreck our ability to keep promises made generations ago.

The run away federal budget process must be reformed.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported late last year that Social Security
is currently paying more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. This is depleting the reserves in the
Trust Fund.

By law, when the trust fund is depleted, Social Security can only pay out benefits equal to what it receives
in payroll taxes. The program's trustees project that trust fund reserves will be tapped out in the fourth
quarter of 2033.

According to the report, that means a mandated 21% across-the-board Social Security benefit cut for
retirees starting in late 2033. That’s just over eight years from now.

When these real impacts hit, everyone in this room is going to feel it. It won’t matter whose fault it is
when it happens, it will be a genuine crisis with far reaching impacts. Our fiscal house has to be put in
order to prevent this.

I urge you to step into this process and help rid us of the Congressional three ring circus by participating
in making real changes to the federal budget process. By passing this resolution, you can look citizens in
the eye and say, “I am doing something about the fiscal calamity that is brewing. You will be supporting
an amendments proposing convention of the states that finally allows you and us to bypass the Congress,
the lobbyists and the special interests.

Fiscal sanity is the only way we keep our promises.

I urge you to support ill_name_here

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Created:	2025-05-30 21:47 GMT
Updated:	2025-05-30 21:47 GMT
Published:	2025-05-30 21:47 GMT
Converted:	2025-11-11 12:36 GMT
Change Author:	Sarah Santana
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