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How Elizabeth Warren Made Expanding Social Security Cool [View all]
Last edited Mon Apr 6, 2015, 08:41 AM - Edit history (1)
How Elizabeth Warren Made Expanding Social Security Cool
Mother Jones
4/6/2016
For years, Washington politicians and policymakers been talking about cutting Social Security benefits. The Beltway consensus, unduly shaped by deficit hawks and Wall Streeters, has been that the system is broken and must be pared back, and progressives who support Social Security have often had to play defense.
But in late March, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Democrat from Massachusetts, entered the fray—and challenged the prevailing view. In the wee hours of March 27, Warren introduced an amendment to the Senate budget resolution calling for protecting the program's solvency and expanding Social Security benefits. And every Democrat present but two voted for the amendment; every Republican opposed it.
A budget resolution is a set of nonbinding guidelines for how Congress should write spending bills during the upcoming year. Congress can and often does ignore budget resolutions, but they are a significant statement of priorities and principles, and the amendment process can be an important game of politics. By introducing this amendment, Warren forced senators to take a position on the popular retirement program. "This is how politics is played if you intend to play to win," says Damon Silvers, policy director and special counsel for the AFL-CIO. "For too long, the progressive or populist part of the Democratic Party has not played to win."...
...In November 2013, the Washington Post editorial board slammed the expansion push as "liberalism gone awry." It noted that "even the rich have finite resources; government can only go to that well so many times…Unchecked entitlement spending for the elderly crowds out spending" on young Americans and other priorities. That's when Warren stepped into the conflict.
The same day, Warren gave a floor speech outlining the looming economic crisis for retirees and lambasting the Post. "The Washington Post framed the choice as more children in poverty versus more seniors in poverty," Warren said. "The suggestion that we have become a country where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong." Warren ended with a call to start "talking about expanding Social Security benefits."
"That was the beginning of really the media starting to take notice and for the conversation to start to shift," recalls Altman, the coauthor of a new book, Social Security Works!...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/can-elizabeth-warren-expand-social-security
Mother Jones
4/6/2016
For years, Washington politicians and policymakers been talking about cutting Social Security benefits. The Beltway consensus, unduly shaped by deficit hawks and Wall Streeters, has been that the system is broken and must be pared back, and progressives who support Social Security have often had to play defense.
But in late March, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Democrat from Massachusetts, entered the fray—and challenged the prevailing view. In the wee hours of March 27, Warren introduced an amendment to the Senate budget resolution calling for protecting the program's solvency and expanding Social Security benefits. And every Democrat present but two voted for the amendment; every Republican opposed it.
A budget resolution is a set of nonbinding guidelines for how Congress should write spending bills during the upcoming year. Congress can and often does ignore budget resolutions, but they are a significant statement of priorities and principles, and the amendment process can be an important game of politics. By introducing this amendment, Warren forced senators to take a position on the popular retirement program. "This is how politics is played if you intend to play to win," says Damon Silvers, policy director and special counsel for the AFL-CIO. "For too long, the progressive or populist part of the Democratic Party has not played to win."...
...In November 2013, the Washington Post editorial board slammed the expansion push as "liberalism gone awry." It noted that "even the rich have finite resources; government can only go to that well so many times…Unchecked entitlement spending for the elderly crowds out spending" on young Americans and other priorities. That's when Warren stepped into the conflict.
The same day, Warren gave a floor speech outlining the looming economic crisis for retirees and lambasting the Post. "The Washington Post framed the choice as more children in poverty versus more seniors in poverty," Warren said. "The suggestion that we have become a country where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong." Warren ended with a call to start "talking about expanding Social Security benefits."
"That was the beginning of really the media starting to take notice and for the conversation to start to shift," recalls Altman, the coauthor of a new book, Social Security Works!...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/can-elizabeth-warren-expand-social-security
Editing to add the names of the 2 "Democrats" who joined republicans & voted "No" on this~
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
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