WASHINGTON — Nothing infuriates Senate Democrats’ budget chief Bernie Sanders quite like calls for cutting Social Security.
So the Vermont senator was livid when TPM asked him at a Capitol news conference about a proposal floated Tuesday in New Hampshire by Republican presidential hopeful and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to incrementally raise the Social Security retirement age to 69 and reduce benefits for upper earners.
“You take a deep breath and try to wonder what world these people live in,” said Sanders, who is also considering a run for president. “What Governor Christie is saying is just the continuation of the war being waged by the Republican Party against the elderly, against the children, against the sick and against the poor, in order to benefit millionaires and billionaires. It is an outrage.”
Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the House’s top Budget Committee Democrat who was at the joint news conference, agreed. “Let me just associate myself with Senator Sanders’ remarks,” he said, adding that he has proposed measures in the House to protect Social Security from any cuts.
The swift and fierce denunciations illustrate the political perils of proposing cuts to the cherished retirement benefits program, which is projected to be able to pay full benefits until 2033. Democrats may seek to use the issue as a weapon in the 2016 election.
Defending his proposal, Christie told Yahoo News that it’s “not a tough sell to current seniors or people about to enter the system because this won’t affect them. We’re going to phase this in over a good period of time.” He added, “These programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — are on the road to ruin if we don’t make changes.”
Sanders said he intends to force a vote to call for avoiding any cuts to Social Security, and “let’s see how many Republicans are prepared to go with Christie.”
He said the next president should “absolutely” support expanding Social Security benefits, as all but two Senate Democrats voted to do last month.
“What Governor Christie is saying is that you should work until you’re 67, 68 years of age because we can’t afford to provide decent retirement benefits to you,” he said. “Anyone who tells you Social Security is going broke is not telling the truth.”
The Dems should make this THE issue for 2016 and use it to demand positions from every GOP Presidential candidate
between now and Nov. of next year. Make them OWN the fact that their party has ALWAYS favored weakening or gutting the program ever since it was established…
Josh cut his chops at TPM on this issue when Bush started trying to “reform” it and I think played a major role in halting that effort by getting politicians to spell out where they stood.
Push the drive to lift the cap on salary deductions…That is a program the majority of Americans would favor.
For the record, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.
Only someone who has never worked a day in their lives would believe working longer is something that can be easily done. They never had blisters on their hands, pulled muscles in their backs, iron or dirt stuck in their eye or lungs filled with smoke or gases. They never broke a bone using a pry bar or fell off a ladder or had a wrench break and busted their knuckles.
These fat ass lazy right wing turds are not only parasites but clueless and delusional and should be laughed off the stage.
People who spend their working life in warm offices have no clue how many jobs wear down the body. It used to be that most of us lived beside or had a family member who earned a living doing manual labor. Now we live in enclaves of people who work at the same types of jobs.
While lowering payments for upper earners is made to sound logical it is a ploy to means test SS so they can attack it as a welfare program, not an earned benefit.
With the money we’re wasting on Social Security, we could be bombing Iran! Public be damned!