O'Malley puts pressure on Clinton with new Social Security plan

Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley will announce on Friday his goal to increase the number of Americans with adequate retirement savings by 50 percent within two terms in the White House, according to plans detailed in a campaign document provided to POLITICO.

Rejecting calls to raise the retirement age, the former governor of Maryland will call for expanding Social Security benefits to all Americans for “current and future” retirees, in addition to lifting the payroll tax cap on people earning more than $250,000.


Despite his low standing in the polls — he’s barely a blip in Iowa and New Hampshire — O’Malley’s plan could increase the pressure on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to release specific ideas of her own.

O’Malley’s proposal also reiterates his call on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 and to enact comprehensive immigration reform. It would increase benefits for low-income workers, or those making minimum wage, by adjusting what are called “bend points” in the formula. Instead of using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, O’Malley supports the use of the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly because, the campaign says, it “provides a more accurate reflection of the higher cost of living for retirees.”

Additionally, O’Malley’s plan would allow for up to five years of “caregiver credits” for those who spend extended periods of time taking care of dependents, like children or elderly parents.

He will also propose simplifying and streamlining retirement savings by requiring employers with more than 10 employees to have an IRA contribution for their staff.

O’Malley will also pledge to protect older Americans from fraud by increasing penalties for financial advisers who “put their own bottom lines before helping their clients.”

The announcement follows last week’s AARP survey on the 80th anniversary of Social Security, in which 61 percent of the 1,200 adults polled said the average monthly payment of $1,332 is too low.

So far, O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are the only two major Democratic candidates to offer their full support for expanding Social Security. Clinton, meanwhile, has not yet said whether she would endorse such a proposal. The former secretary of state has indicated that she would be open to increasing Social Security taxes on those making more than $118,500, as Sanders is proposing, as a way to pump more money into the program, but she has not yet detailed any specific ideas.

“We do have to look at the cap, and we have to figure out whether we raise it or whether we raise it a little and then jump over and raise it more higher up,” Clinton said at a New Hampshire campaign event last week.

Those comments represent a shift from the 2008 campaign, when Clinton attacked then-Senator Barack Obama for proposing to lift the payroll tax cap. At the time, she said doing so “would impose additional taxes on people who are educators, police officers, firefighters and the like,” and proposed a bipartisan commission to come up with solutions for ensuring the program’s long-term solvency.

This time around, Clinton faces growing pressure on Social Security from her party’s liberal wing, which has rallied behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s thundering 2013 call from the Senate floor to expand the program.

At the time, top officials at the centrist think tank Third Way set off an intra-party squabble by blasting Warren for peddling a “populist political and economic fantasy,” but the idea of expanding Social Security has only gained traction on the left as the Democratic primary has heated up.

Many progressives now believe the best way to protect Social Security from Republican calls to privatize or shrink the program is to go on offense. In late March, all but two Democratic senators voted for a symbolic amendment that called for a “sustainable expansion in benefits”; it was easily brushed aside by the Republican Senate, but was hailed by progressives as a victory for the left — while liberal pundits saw the measure’s broad support as a sign of pending trouble for Clinton.

The Center for American Progress — founded by Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and led by longtime Clinton adviser Neera Tanden — released a report in February emphasizing the importance of fixing income inequality in addressing Social Security issues.

As for Warren, she has pointedly declined to endorse Clinton until she embraces certain liberal priorities — among them Social Security.

“I think we need to lower the interest rate on student loans. I think we need to put more money into medical research. I think that we need to raise the minimum wage. Nobody should work full time and still live in poverty. I think we need to strengthen Social Security and expand its reach. There’s a lot to fight over right this minute,” Warren said during an April appearance on NBC’s Today Show.

Former Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who endorsed Clinton last week, was one of the senators pushing for expanding Social Security even before Warren’s amendment.

But Clinton has only spoken of the entitlement program in broad generalities.

“What do we do to make sure it is there?” she said during a visit to New Hampshire in April. “We don’t mess with it.”