Tea Partyers, Union Members, Democrats, Republicans—All Love Social Security. So Let’s Expand It! [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/tea-partyers-union-members-democrats-republicans-all-love-social-security-so-lets-expand-it



Nothing explains the stakes involved better than the new book “Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All” by Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson, co-founders of Social Security Works and longtime experts in the field, who served on the staff of the Greenspan Commission in the 1980s, helping to craft the last major overhaul of the system. They cover an impressively wide range of topics—from a brief history of Social Security’s birth and development and attacks against it, to debunking today’s most common lies about it, to highlighting the real challenges it faces in meeting the growing needs of a working and middle class in more perilous circumstances than ever before in the system’s history. Perhaps most important, at the center of all this, they explain the logic of expanding Social Security—both increasing benefits and adding new ones—and how to pay for it in an equitable manner. Salon’s interview with the authors has been edited for length and for clarity.

I mentioned before Amitai Etzioni’s article trying to paint Elizabeth Warren and other progressive Democrats as supporting “unpopular populism,” which he identifies with “welfare,” deliberately misrepresenting the actual issues she and other progressives have been focusing on. Etzioni even goes so far as to try to use Social Security—as opposed to welfare—against Warren, despite the fact that Warren advocates strengthening and expanding Social Security. His argument seems to typify the blindness of elite discourse to the actual economic issues of the day, and your book struck me as perfectly illuminating the one program at the center of their blind spot. To those who might be swayed by such arguments, that there’s nothing popular that progressive populists can hope to do, what points does your book make to shine a light on what’s being missed?

Altman: The beauty of Social Security, the ingenuity of that program, is that it represents basic American values that are shared very broadly. So, as a consequence, Social Security is extremely successful, but it’s also extremely popular across the political spectrum.

We found in polling that Tea Partyers support it, union members support it, independents, Republicans, Democrats – it’s also widely supported among every demographic group and every age. The younger you are, the less likely you are to think Social Security will be there for you but they do support it, they believe it’s an important program … So this is an issue that, when you’ve got 80 percent of the country answering polls that Social Security should be expanded, but they do not think it should be cut, they think it’s vital, they think it’s more important in the future, all of those kinds of things, those kinds of numbers, you know that it’s very popular.