The mainstream Democratic position on Social Security is expansion
by digby
I wrote a piece for Salon this morning about the evolution on Social Security that’s taken place over the past few years. This brings it up to date:
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported:
For years, liberal Democrats have fought against proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Now, they’re pushing the party not just to defend benefits but to increase them, and that could present a problem for Hillary Clinton.
The call for higher benefits is a marked difference from recent years in which the White House and Republicans were negotiating deficit-cutting deals, leaving liberals to argue merely for staving off benefit cutbacks. Separately, many experts in both parties have long argued that extending the solvency of the program would require a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases.
New legislation to increase benefits and raise the cap on payroll taxes (to include higher earnings) now has 58 co-sponsors in the House. The Senate voted on a similar measure and had 42 votes. This is a huge change from the reflexive handwringing over deficits and solvency that characterized the last three decades.
The Wall Street Journal contends that this is a problem for Hillary Clinton because she, like President Obama, has endorsed benefits cuts in the past. The article notes that her presumed rival former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is a proponent of expansion in contrast to her more conservative position. But the truth is that nobody knows what Clinton thinks about this at the moment. The last time she ran, cutting benefits was as mainstream as it gets. Indeed, O’Malley himself signed on to something called “A New Agenda for the New Decade” back in 2000 which was filled with all the usual solvency hysterics and called for “reform” of Social Security. He thought it was a terrific idea to have low income people be able to “invest” in Retirement Savings Accounts so they could save for their own retirement. (Because they have so much extra money …) In his defense, that was the most liberal position at the time.
So, we have come a long way. The former Social Security reformer O’Malley has had a huge change of heart and is now agitating for expansion. The U.S. Congress now features a large faction of progressives and centrists in both houses backing the same. Despite the Wall Street Journal’s assumption that such a change is a “problem” for Hillary Clinton, the way this wind is blowing suggests that she will have no problem at all if, like O’Malley, she has evolved to support it. She will likely have a big problem if she hasn’t.
And it’s fair to assume that the Republicans do not like this one bit. The Democrats have marched right into the belly of the beast with a peace offering. After all, the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the most hardcore members of the Republican base. Will they turn down a raise?
I don’t know what Clinton will say when she’s asked about this. But that vote in the Senate a couple of weeks ago is a huge signal that the Party has moved on this issue.
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