Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) issued a stark warning to supporters: Republicans are willing to create a crisis pitting “America’s seniors against America’s disabled” in order to gut Social Security.
“We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run low in 2016, and most people assumed that another bipartisan reallocation was coming,” Warren wrote in an email to supporters on Wednesday evening. “But now, thanks to the Republican ideological war on our most important national safety net, disabled Americans could suddenly face a 20% cut in their Social Security checks next year.”
House Republicans quietly passed a rule change last month that would block Congress from being able to make routine tax revenue transfers between the Social Security retirement and disability funds, commonly referred to as reallocation, unless the program’s overall solvency is improved.
Like Warren, other liberal Democrats, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have vowed to strongly resist Republicans’ move.
“They want to dramatically slice Social Security, so we negotiate and compromise a small cut in Social Security,” Brown said in an interview with TPM. “No, that’s not the way you negotiate.”
Republicans’ claim that this is about budget balancing is nonsense, Warren said.
“Republicans want to pretend this fight is all about dollars and cents. But at the end of the day, this is about a lot more than accounting: It’s about our values,” Warren said.
