Biden will work to protect and expand social security: Day 34 of 100 Days of loving Joe Biden

by GoodNewsRoundup

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(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020 Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020 at 4:03:26am PDT

Americans depend on social security and Joe Biden not only protect it, he will expand it for those in need.

From Market Watch → Joe Biden’s retirement reforms are the boldest we’ve seen in generations

Biden’s Social Security proposals are targeted directly toward seniors in need.

Biden wants to increase benefits for retirees who, on account of their low lifetime wages, had trouble saving for retirement. For the very poorest retirees, benefits from Social Security and SSI would increase by as much as $6,500 a year. The Social Security Administration estimates that a transition to the Biden benefit structure would pull over half a million seniors out of poverty in 2030.

Along with helping formerly low-wage workers, Biden’s plan aids two other vulnerable groups: the eldest of the elderly, and the widowed.

His plan would increase benefits for all seniors who had received Social Security checks for at least 20 years. Since the poor start claiming benefits at younger ages than the rich, this minor tweak would open the elder benefit to people in real need.

Biden’s plan would increase benefits for widows and widowers. Under current law, when a husband or wife dies, the surviving spouse is left with the higher of two amounts: either their own Social Security check, or half of their dead partner’s check.

These are not halfhearted measures. Biden has been portrayed as a moderate throughout the 2020 campaign, and in some regards, that is probably an accurate moniker. He is moderate in temperament and style, and often expresses centrist attitudes toward social policy and culture.

But he is not moderate when it comes to helping the poor. His economic policy proposals reflect Franklin Delano Roosevelt more than Paul Ryan. When it comes to retirement policy, Biden is proposing the boldest set of reforms since the creation of Social Security itself.

in the comments, Social Democrat points out that the Wharton school’s analysis of his plan points out that his expansion will actually help everyone

This analysis from Wharton reports that Biden’s plans a benefit increase which is universal:

The Biden plan would provide a benefit “bump up” for older beneficiaries that increases in size during ages 78 to 82 to reach a full 5 percent increase in the basic benefit calculated in the year of their retirement (“primary insurance amount”) by age 82 and beyond.

This benefit increase applies to all Social Security recipients.

Regardless of our income, when we reach age 78, our benefits increase. At age 82, the increase will amount to a pretty-generous five per cent our computed benefit.

Since the median life expectancy is now roughly 85 years, most people can expect to receive the benefit.

This provision of the Biden plan alone amounts to an actually significant expansion of the program as a whole.

But wait, you may argue, I swear I heard somewhere that Biden called for cutting social security.

Nope. Here is where the confusion came from:

The Week published an article titled “Joe Biden Doesn’t Get It.” The article breezily states that Biden supports “abysmal ideas like cutting social insurance programs.” It quotes the former Vice President as saying: “Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code. What’s the first thing he decided we had to go after? Social Security and Medicare…That’s the only way you can find room to pay for it.”

The ellipsis in that quote was misleading and the quote itself was cherry-picked. It came from an hour-long speech Biden gave in 2018 on why we should expand the safety net. When he uttered those particular words, Biden was parodying Ryan, whose ideas he cited as being antithetical to his own.

Got that? all that stuff we heard in the primary was from when he was pointing out that the only way to pay for Ryan’s immoral tax cuts was to gut social security and medicare. He wasn’t saying he wanted to. He was actually expressing the opposite.

Similarly — Politifact evaluated one of the other democratic candidates saying that Joe Biden "has advocated cutting Social Security for 40 years" and called it “mostly false” They argued that over his long long career, and his many many votes in the Senate, he has done much more to protect and expand social security than limit it.

Joe Biden has made a career and life of caring for the people most in need. He will continue that by doing all her can to protect and enhance social security.

His proposed policies will protect social security for all recipients, increase benefits for the poor, protect the oldest of the elderly, and the widowed.