Obama Wanted to Cut Social Security. Then Bernie Sanders Happened

[Teamster Jeff]

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Remember Chained CPI Social Security cuts. Because SS was such a "problem". Yeah me too.

“President Obama’s evolution on Social Security, from at one time being open to cuts to calling for an expansion of benefits … is certainly welcome news, but not at all surprising,” said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit group that advocates for protecting and expanding the program.

Lawson’s organization has worked with lawmakers and other nonprofit organizations to oppose Obama’s proposed Social Security cuts and shift the conversation towards expansion. By the summer of 2014, a small group of Democratic caucus senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, started advocating for lifting Social Security’s payroll tax cap so wealthier people paid more into the system, and then increasing benefits to seniors. Polling by advocacy groups found broad support for expansion.

This idea became a central theme in Sanders’s presidential campaign. In the speech announcing his candidacy, the senator said that “instead of cutting Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security benefits.”

By April 2013, 2.3 million Americans had signed petitions calling on the president to back off of chained CPI. The signatures were presented at a White House rally that featured Sanders, who vowed to “do everything in my power to block President Obama’s proposal to cut benefits for Social Security recipients through a chained consumer price index.”

The senator mobilized a wide coalition or organizations, including veterans, women’s rights groups, and labor unions to oppose chained CPI.

Under this intense activist pressure, the White House was unable to convince its own allies in Congress that this change was worth the political costs. The next year, the chained CPI was quietly dropped from Obama’s budget proposal.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s evolution on the issue could also be traced to Sanders. Clinton initially shied away from the question of expanding the program, issuing only noncommittal statements on the issue. But after being directly challenged on the Social Security program this past February by the Sanders campaign, Clinton tweeted, “As always, I’ll defend it, & I’ll expand it.”

Now that's change I can really believe in

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/02/obama-wanted-to-cut-social-security-then-bernie-sanders-happened/

http://xnerg.blogspot.com/