The IT ... is Social Security. The contrast is what the leading Democratic Candidates say they are going to do about it ...
At a New Hampshire roundtable discussion (April 20, 2015):
“Let’s just take a deep breath here as a country and say, ‘OK, we are going to have a retirement issue and people who worked hard deserve to have enough security when they retire so they can have a good quality of life.’ So I’m 100 percent committed to that,” Mrs. Clinton said.
What do words like “enough security” and “good quality of life” mean operationally? What exactly is Clinton “100 percent committed” to? If not expansion, what?
From a campaign spokesperson clarifying Clinton’s views after that roundtable (April 20, 2015):
[Talking Points Memo] had previously asked the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign about her position on Social Security — whether she supported expanding it as liberal Democrats have been arguing recently or what she thought of proposals like some of the likely Republican 2016 field.
Spokesman Jesse Ferguson responded, “Hillary has a record of fighting against privatizing Social Security and opposing cuts to seniors benefits and, as she said yesterday, dealing with challenges facing older Americans is a top priority for her.”
“Opposing cuts” doesn’t mean expansion. [...]
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-on-social-security-expansion-words-are-wind-a-cold-wind.html
As the wealthiest nation in the world at the wealthiest moment in our history, not only can we afford the current Social Security program; we can afford a vastly expanded program. By proposing to expand Social Security while requiring the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share, your action alone would put the lie to the claim that Social Security is unaffordable and so won't be there in the future.
Forty-three Senators and 107 House members (a majority of the Democratic caucus) are on record favoring expanding benefits. Among Democratic presidential candidates, both Senator Bernie Sanders and Governor Martin O'Malley have comprehensive plans for both targeted and across-the-board expansions of Social Security benefits; Secretary Hillary Clinton supports some targeted expansion of benefits.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-altman/dear-president-obama-crea_b_8944958.html
Lest we forget our recent “Grand Bargaining” history, that was slated to leave seniors with the short end of the balancing-the-budget stick … Step 9 of the Simpson-Bowles “Catfood” Commission Plan:
9) The Social Security changes. Simpson-Bowles makes three main changes to Social Security. It increases the taxable maximum on income to 90 percent of all income, which raises $238 billion over the next decade. It uses a different measure of inflation to slow cost-of-living adjustments. It raises the retirement age to 68 in 2050 and 69 in 2075.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/12/04/11-shocking-true-facts-about-simpson-bowles/
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And taxing Seniors more, slowing their COLA’s, and raising the retirement bar — is NOT the same thing as “expanding it” either.
At least one candidate thinks that America’s Seniors deserve better … MUCH better:
The Bowles-Simpson commission recommended dramatic changes to the popular social insurance program in December 2010, including increasing the retirement age to 69, means-testing benefits and cutting the program’s cost-of-living adjustment by adopting a “chained” Consumer Price Index.
[...]
At that time, Sanders spoke to progressives protesting outside the White House who had delivered over 2.5 million signatures against the move. The Times, for its part, also condemned the chained CPI, while implying it remained open to some other benefit cuts.
Along with the pressure from Obama’s base, the requisite Republican support for revenue increases to complete a “grand bargain” on the budget was once again not forthcoming. The administration shelved the provision the following year, which CNN called “music to liberals’ ears.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-times-social-security-expansion_568c09e6e4b0b958f65d197e
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At least one candidate thinks that America’s Seniors deserve a different kind of Bargain — one that delivers on the Worker’s Benefit compact they toiled their lives away — expecting. A “Social Bargain” to take care of our own in their golden years — and NOT setting them adrift on that ‘proverbial iceberg’ of ever-shrinking income checks …
BASH: Secretary Clinton, the question was not just about tuition, though. It was about Senator Sanders' plan to expand Social Security, to make Medicare available to all Americans. Is that something that you would support? And if not, why not?
CLINTON: Well, I fully support Social Security. And the most important fight we're going to have is defending it against continuing Republican efforts to privatize it.
BASH: Do you want to expand it?
CLINTON: I want to enhance the benefits for the poorest recipients of Social Security. We have a lot of women on Social Security, particularly widowed and single women who didn't make a lot of money during their careers, and they are impoverished, and they need more help from the Social Security system.
And I will focus -- I will focus on helping those people who need it the most. And of course I'm going to defend Social Security. I'm going to look for ways to try to make sure it's solvent into the future. [...]
SANDERS: When the Republicans -- when the Republicans in the Congress and some Democrats were talking about cutting Social Security and benefits for disabled veterans, for the so-called chained CPI, I founded a caucus called the Defending Social Security Caucus.
My view is that when you have millions of seniors in this country trying to get by -- and I don't know how they do on $11,000, $12,000, $13,000 a year -- you don't cut Social Security, you expand it. And the way you expand it is by lifting the cap on taxable incomes so that you do away with the absurdity of a millionaire paying the same amount into the system as somebody making $118,000. You do that, Social Security is solvent until 2061 and you can expand benefits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/13/the-oct-13-democratic-debate-who-said-what-and-what-it-means/
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At least one Candidates thinks Grandma and Grandpa should live in Dignity and without fear … Fear that the Taxman will find the “means” to erode away, what pittance of pay that now receive, under the rationale that some Seniors can “afford it” — afford to be asked to help make Social Security “solvent”.
Because some status-quo Commission, made up of Millionaires, SAYS SO.
Don’t your Grandparents deserve a raise? Don’t your Parents? … Don’t you and I do some day, assuming that “Social Bargain” is still intact, by the time we manage to live that long — after 4 long decades of toil and sweat, of fret and stress, and watching our “real wages” erode away, all for the sake of some rarely-defined, rarely-examined “corporate expediency” … ???