President Obama on Wednesday called for expanding Social Security, moving further away from his previous willingness to bargain over Social Security benefits and aligning himself more closely with the Democratic presidential candidates.
“We can’t afford to weaken Social Security, we should be strengthening Social Security,” Obama said during a speech on the economy in Elkhart, Ind., decrying Americans’ inability to save for retirement.
“And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned,” he concluded.
Such an effort could be paid for, the president suggested, with higher taxes on the “wealthiest Americans.”
Obama did not offer any further details. A White House official said in an email to the Examiner that there “have been a number of ideas put forward about how to strengthen Social Security, and the President is open to different approaches, including exploring whether the wealthiest Americans should pay more.”
The president’s rhetoric Wednesday paralleled that of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has run for president calling for the expansion of Social Security, rather than cutting benefits to reduce deficits. Hillary Clinton, too, has backed greater benefits for poor beneficiaries and widows. Liberal Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have joined with outside progressive groups to get candidates to commit to increasing benefits.
Some of those groups claimed victory Wednesday evening. “Progressives led, the people spoke out, and the politicians are now embracing change we can believe in: Expanding Social Security benefits — never cutting them,” wrote Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, co-founders of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in an email to their list. “This will be a defining issue in the 2016 election.”
In past years, as part of negotiations with congressional Republicans to address the rising federal debt, Obama expressed a willingness to choose a different inflation index for calculating Social Security benefits, a move that would have had the effect of shrinking benefits. It was criticized by some Democrats at the time.
As annual deficits dropped and the pressure to cut a debt deal subsided, however, Obama took that offer off the table, and it has not appeared in his recent budgets.
