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Social Security is not just the foundation of America's retirement dignity and security, it ensures the economic stability and strength of our families and our state's economy.

Through good times and bad, American workers and their families have been able to rely on Social Security to provide guaranteed protection against the loss of earnings due to retirement, disability, or death.

The women who pass away before they receive Social Security, for them this is nothing but a tax from which they or their family will never receive a benefit.

If a woman did not work and have the opportunity to save and invest on her own throughout her lifetime, she is often totally reliant on her family and Social Security for her retirement years.

On the other end of the spectrum, these women who do live long enough to collect Social Security face the challenge of being disproportionately dependent on the Social Security system for retirement income.

Social Security is a plan that actually was designed in a much different time, in a different era, and with a different set of American demographics in mind.

As you know, Social Security functions under the premise that today's workers will help finance benefits for retirees and that these workers will then be supported by the next generation of workers paying into the same system.

For these reasons, women tend to rely more heavily on Social Security in their retirement than do men.

The reason to deal with Social Security is that it is a system where we have a tradition and history of making sure it is solidly funded for 75 years. At the moment, we look out and we see it is solidly funded until 2037.

Social Security makes up a much larger share of total retirement income for unmarried women and minorities than it does for married couples, unmarried men and whites.