MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In a tacit repudiation of White House interest in reaching a "grand bargain" that would, in effect, cut Social Security, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D - MA) has offered a rousing argument to expand Social Security, not contract it.

As BuzzFlash at Truthout pointed out yesterday, "Average Social Security Check Is $1269, But CEOs With Nest Eggs Worth Tens of Millions Want to Slash the Program":

According to the Social Security Administration, the current average Social Security benefit is a measly $1,269 -- and remember recipients paid into the fund and are being repaid their earnings in the form of barely livable retirement checks.

The economic inequity in the US, as often noted here, is only growing, reaching beyond a Grand Canyon gap. It's more like an intergalactic distance when CEO advocates of cutting Social Security have accumulated retirement accounts "more than 1,200 times as much as the median retirement savings of U.S. workers near retirement age."

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On the issue of the Chained-CPI, which Obama is reportedly advocating for, The Nation figures that a conservative estimate indicates that the CPI would "take $15,615 in cumulative benefits from the average senior who lived to 95."

But Warren is going much further and debunking the whole notion that seniors living on $1,269 a month are the major contributors to the deficit as compared to the tax breaks and loopholes that have led to the massive redistribution of national revenue to the top 1%.

In a news release on Warren's senate website, she issued an impassioned appeal to save our elderly from poverty imposed by the "conventional wisdom" of shifting the nation's financial assets to a privileged few:

“With tens of millions of people more financially stressed as they approach retirement, with more and more people left out of the private retirement security system, and with the economic security of our families unraveling, Social Security is rapidly becoming the only lifeline that millions of seniors have to keep their heads above water,” Senator Warren said. “And yet, instead of taking on the retirement crisis, instead of strengthening Social Security, some in Washington are actually fighting to cut benefits…

"So long as these problems continue to exist and so long as we are in the midst of a real and growing retirement crisis – a crisis that is shaking the foundations of what was once a vibrant and secure middle class – the absolute last thing we should be doing is talking about cutting back on Social Security. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 – at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors – is allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch.”

At a time of record stock market gains and Wall Street wealth for a relatively small number of people in our society, Washington DC -- under the campaign funding leash of those with unprecedented financial assets -- is enabling the US to become more and more a society similar to the medieval divisions of society into royal court (and noblemen) wealth vs. the vassals (everyone else in the great masses). The few lived in luxury; the many barely lived.

Warren is breaking the frame of conversation in DC by bringing up the unmentionable fiction that there is no class warfare going on in the US. It's been going on for decades, with the middle class decimated, the poor going nowhere, and the wealthiest stealing increasing percentages of the dollars in our economy.

In her actual senate remarks, she issued a clairon call for respecting the contributions and needs of those Americans who -- as the cliche goes -- "played by the rules" and now are being financially rolled by the NYC/DC elite:

Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more productive, their wages flattened out, while core expenses, things like housing and health care and sending a kid to college, just kept going up.

Working families didn’t ask for a bailout. They rolled up their sleeves and sent both parents into the workforce. But that meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could. Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases.

When that still wasn’t enough to cover rising costs, they took on debt – credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the necessities. As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial institutions were all too happy to chain them to financial products that got them into even more trouble -- products where fine print and legalese covered up the true costs of credit.

These trends are not new, and there have been warning signs for years about what is happening to our middle class. One major consequence of these increasing pressures on working people – a consequence that receives far too little attention – is that the dream of a secure retirement is slowly slipping away.

A generation ago, middle-class families were able to put away enough money during their working years to make it through their later years with dignity.

...the retirement landscape has shifted dramatically against our families. Among working families on the verge of retirement, about a third have no retirement savings of any kind, and another third have total savings that are less than their annual income. Many seniors have seen their housing wealth shrink as well. According to AARP, in 2012, one out of every seven older homeowners was paying down a mortgage that was higher than the value of their house.

And just as they need to rely more than ever on pensions, employers are withdrawing from their traditional role in helping provide a secure retirement.

Warren has once again broken through the fictional conventional wisdom of Washington, that it is those with the least means that cause debt, instead of those few with billions and hundreds of millions in wealth who are allowed government breaks galore to accumulate opulent and unnecessary wealth, to define national success by how much money one person can scam from government research and tax breaks and loopholes.

We have become a society that has monetized the soul.

Warren reminds us that the struggle is not over, that a single person (like Bernie Sanders) or Warren can redefine who we are as a national community.

In the end, will democracy be able to triumph in creating a national community that is fair and generous -- or will the evil side of the human spirit triumph in creating a government that resembles a pyramid of greed?

(Photo: Elizabeth Warren Senate Website)