The Sanders and Biden campaigns have been trading salvos over Joe Biden's thirty-six years of Senate service, particularly in regard to Social Security.
Sanders has already apologized for one attack on Biden. But no sooner had the apology left Sanders's lips than his campaign launched another set of attacks. The attacks involved Social Security, claiming among other charges that Biden had in the 1990s called for "adjustments" to the program, and that the word "adjustments" was a euphemism for cuts.
However, it turns out that Sanders also called for "adjustments" to Social Security during that same time period:
While running for re-election in 1996, then-Congressman Sanders said at a news conference that the Social Security system had “been adjusted before, and adjustments will have to be made again.” The Sanders campaign has assailed Biden for saying Social Security was in need of “adjustments” in a 2018 speech, with Chief Policy Adviser Warren Gunnels on Wednesday quoting an interest group saying the term was a “euphemism” for cuts.
“When politicians want to expand Social Security, which is extremely popular, they say so. They don’t use euphemisms like ‘adjustments,’” Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said in the statement that Gunnels quoted on Twitter.
It is a mystery to me why Bernie Sanders's campaign staff and its surrogates thought that this was a wise attack to make, or why Sanders, who maintains a deep involvement in every aspect of his campaigns and who one would think would be keenly aware of his own policy record, didn't step in to stop it.
Thursday, Jan 23, 2020 · 2:53:53 AM +00:00
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Tkiek
Also from the Bloomberg article, Sanders's opinion of Biden before they both decided to run for president:
“Joe Biden is a man who has devoted his entire life to public service and to the well being of working families and the middle class.”