Social Security Works PAC backs Randy Bryce for Congress

Democrat Randy Bryce, who is running for the congressional seat held by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, this week won the endorsement of the Social Security Works PAC.

“The people of Wisconsin's 1st District deserve a representative who will fight to expand Social Security and Medicare, not destroy them,” said Jon “Bowzer” Bauman, president of the PAC. “Randy Bryce, who is intimately familiar with the struggles working families face, will be that representative. I enthusiastically endorse his campaign to repeal and replace Paul Ryan.”

The PAC is the political arm of Social Security Works, a national organization fighting to protect and expand our Social Security system.

At the endorsement event, Bauman reviewed Ryan’s poor record on senior issues and said Bryce is the best candidate to represent the one in five Wisconsinites who receive Social Security benefits.

The PAC also released these details about Social Security in the state:

• Social Security provided benefits to 1,189,455 Wisconsinites in 2016, one in five residents.

• Wisconsinites received Social Security benefits totaling $18.5 billion in 2016, an amount equivalent to 7.0 percent of the state’s total personal income.

• The average Social Security benefit in Wisconsin was $15,526 in 2016.

• Social Security lifted 431,000 Wisconsinites out of poverty in 2013.

• Social Security provided benefits to 845,036 Wisconsin retired workers in 2016, seven in 10 beneficiaries.

• Social Security benefits lifted 321,000 Wisconsin residents aged 65 and older out of poverty in 2014-15. Without Social Security, the elderly poverty rate in Wisconsin would have increased from one in 17 to three in seven.

• Social Security provided disability benefits to 160,929 Wisconsin workers in 2016, one in eight Wisconsin beneficiaries.

• Social Security provided benefits to 610,795 Wisconsin women in 2016, one in five.

• Social Security lifted 196,000 Wisconsin women aged 65 and older out of poverty in 2013.

• Social Security provided benefits to 75,603 Wisconsin children in 2016, one in 15 Wisconsin beneficiaries.

• Social Security provided benefits to two in seven African-American households in Wisconsin in 2016, 35,902 households.

• Social Security provided benefits to one in seven Latinx households in Wisconsin in 2016, 14,817 households.

• Social Security provided benefits to one in four American Indian and Alaska Native households in Wisconsin in 2016, 6,815 households.

• Social Security provided benefits to two in 15 Asian American, Hawaiian Native, and Pacific Islander households in Wisconsin in 2016, 5,940 households.

• One quarter rural or non-metropolitan Wisconsinites received Social Security in 2015.

Bryce’s message for Social Security Works supporters was this: “Here in Wisconsin, we’re not taking Paul Ryan’s hateful agenda lying down and we’ve launched the earliest opposition Paul Ryan has ever faced here in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. With your help, we’re going to hold Paul Ryan accountable for his destructive, hypocritical agenda.”