The campaign of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu launched a website, 70WillHurt.com, on Thursday to attack Republican Bill Cassidy for supporting an increase in the Social Security age to 70 during the Louisiana Senate debate.
“Congressman Cassidy went further than anyone could have anticipated Tuesday night by advancing a bogus, out-of-touch claim that raising the Social Security eligibility age just wouldn’t ‘hurt anybody,” Landrieu spokesman Fabien Levy said in unveiling the website, which features a clip of Cassidy defending Social Security cuts followed by Landrieu vowing to protect the program.
Cassidy voted in April 2014 for the conservative Republican Study Committee budget, which calls for incrementally raising the Social Security eligibility age to 70 and slowing the rate of inflation for benefits over time.
During the Tuesday debate, Cassidy defended that vote. “This was previously done by Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan, and the fact that people don’t talk about it is because it happened so — it just didn’t hurt anybody,” he said. “If you pick an age in which someone’s 40 now, and they would become eligible [for Social Security] at 67 and a month. If they’re 39 they become eligible at 67 and two months. … They have time to plan for their change in retirement, but for those who are currently on, those about to be, nothing changes.”
Cassidy, a U.S. congressman since 2009, is the favorite to win the race. He leads Landrieu by 6.3 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, according to the TPM PollTracker Average.
