Social Security is taking center stage in the Democratic primary, now that the contest is looking like a two-way race a between Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard largely ignored despite her continued candidacy.

Biden has worked with Republicans to push proposals to freeze Social Security funding, cut Social Security benefits and raise the Social Security retirement age and those efforts are haunting him as a presidential candidate.

Sanders has been explicit about his position, saying: “We’re not going to cut Social Security benefits. We’re going to expand them.”

“Biden has even been on the floor of the Senate giving speeches bragging that he tried to cut Social Security on four separate occasions,” said David Sirota, a spokesperson for Sanders. “By contrast, from the moment he was sworn in as a congressman, Bernie has worked to block Social Security cuts and expand Social Security benefits.”

The Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign is now airing a new ad reviewing the difference between Bernie and Biden on Social Security.

“Get real, Joe. One of us has a history of not only fighting cuts to Social Security but working to expand benefits. And that’s why we are the campaign best positioned to defeat Donald Trump,” said Sanders, in a post on Twitter.

During a Fox News town hall Thursday night, President Donald Trump admitted that he plans to push for serious cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Budget proposals that Trump sent to Congress have entirely dropped any pretense about his administration being unwilling to cut Medicaid, which provides health insurance to people with low incomes.

Of course, Trump has already admitted this in his budgets, even though he promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. (Trump ) In a recent interview, Trump also suggested that he intended to slash entitlements,

About half of American households over the age of 55 have no retirement savings and one out of five seniors are trying to live on less than $13,500 a year.

Social Security, the most successful government program in our nation’s history, has paid every cent owed to every eligible American – on time and without delay since it was established in 1933.

Despite what you may have heard from those who want to cut back on Social Security, let’s be clear: Social Security is not “going broke.” Social Security has a $2.9 trillion surplus and can pay every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 16 years.

Although Social Security’s finances are strong, Congress must strengthen and expand it for generations to come. How do we do that? Simple.

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the wealthiest Americans do not pay their fair share into the system, because the Social Security payroll tax is capped. A billionaire pays the same amount of money as someone who makes $132,900 a year.

Sanders’ Social Security plan would lift this cap and apply the payroll tax on all income over $250,000 in order to accomplish four things.

First, he would make sure that Social Security will pay every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 52 years.

Second, he would expand benefits across-the-board including a $1,300 a year benefit increase for seniors with incomes of $16,000 a year or less.

Third, he would lift millions of seniors out of poverty by increasing the minimum benefits paid to low-income workers when they retire.

Fourth, he would increase cost-of-living adjustments to keep up with the rising cost of health care and prescription drugs by establishing a Consumer Price Index for the Elderly.

Biden has been willing in budget negotiations with Republicans to consider raising the age of eligibility or recalculating cost-of-living increases for these programs for the elderly, that’s not what he is saying now but it is consistent with positions he has taken in the past.

Back in 1984 when Ronald Reagan was president, then 41-year-old Senator Biden co-sponsored, with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and others, a measure seeking a one-year, across-the-board spending freeze that would have eliminated cost-of-living increases for Social Security and Medicare.

Biden made repeated statements in 1995 that reflect a willingness to put the burden of paying for fiscal recklessness on the backs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid srecipients.

Biden, Jan. 31, 1995: When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice. I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time. Somebody has to tell me in here how we are going to do this hard work without dealing with any of those sacred cows, some deserving more protection than others.

Biden’s willingness to cut Social Security was also made evident by his vote in 1996, when he was among the 12 Democrats who joined almost all Republican senators by supporting a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.

As recently as during Biden’s eight years as Vice President, the Obama administration offered up Social Security cuts as part of a “grand bargain” with an increasingly radical, right-wing GOP.

Biden, a Delaware senator at the time, supported Reagan era moves to implement mammoth tax cuts, tilted toward the wealthy, and to increase defense spending. Sanders asserts that those trickle-down Reaganomics policies have utterly failed.

The mentality of Biden-style Democrats — that the best the party could do was play defense — was dominant for the past 40 years but Sanders represents a growing and passionate viewpoint that Democrats should proudly champion programs like the Great Society and New Deal.

They argue that when top tax rates were 90 percent, the US still had a booming economy and enough government revenue to create a high standard of living among a large, prosperous and growing middle class.

Those progressive tax rates not only funded free public education, a strong defense, such massive infrastructure investments as roads and waterworks, the space program and other scientific exploration, but they also allowed Congress to consistently reduce the national debt, as a percentage of GDP.

A comparison between the 50-year track record under New Deal policies and the four decades since America adopted Reaganomics, presents a stark contrast.

The New Deal resulted in almost universal prosperity, greater individual freedom, more discovery, and a rising standard of living.

Life expectency for Americans went from 59 in 1930 to 74 in 1980, and to 79 today. That is a 25 percent increase over 50 years but only a six percent gain over the 40 years it took Reaganomics to produce rampant economic inequality that put more than half the population in or near poverty.

While critics paint Sanders as a ‘radical’ his ideas reflect that kind of government initiatives that were popularly implemented in America for 50 years, with stunning success.

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