Salon: A liberal case for Donald Trump: The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Trump has no social security policy; Clinton says no cuts

Donald Trump has yet to Take a Stand.

http://takeastand.aarp.org/candidate/donald-trump/

Social Security isn’t just a program—it’s a promise. As president, Hillary will:

Defend Social Security against Republican attacks. Republicans are using scare tactics about the future and effectiveness of Social Security to push through policies that would jeopardize it. The real threat is Republican attempts to undermine the bedrock of the system. Hillary believes that Social Security must remain what it has always been: a rock-solid benefit that seniors can always count on—not subject to the budget whims of Congress or to the fluctuations of the stock market. She fought Republican efforts to undermine Social Security when she was a senator and throughout her career, and she will fight them as president. As president, she would:

Fight any attempts to gamble seniors’ retirement security on the stock market through privatization.
Oppose reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments.
Oppose Republican efforts to raise the retirement age—an unfair idea that will particularly hurt the seniors who have worked the hardest throughout their lives.
Oppose closing the long-term shortfall on the backs of the middle class, whether through benefit cuts or tax increases.

http://takeastand.aarp.org/candidate/hillary-clinton/

Hillary Clinton: Clinton wants to “expand Social Security for those who need it most and who are treated unfairly by the current system — including women who are widows and those who took significant time out of the paid workforce to take care of their children, aging parents, or ailing family members.”

Of note, Clinton is the only candidate who wants to improve benefits for caregivers, according to AARP. “She supports targeted benefit expansions, including a caregiver credit so that people (mostly women) who take time out of the workforce to care for loved ones aren’t penalized when calculating their Social Security benefits,” according to SocialSecurityWorks.org.

And like Sanders, Clinton wants to “preserve Social Security for decades to come by asking the wealthiest to contribute more.” Options include: taxing some of their income above the current Social Security cap and taxing some of their income not currently taken into account by the Social Security system. Read Clinton’s proposal.

SocialSecurityWorks.org praised Sanders and Clinton for opposing all types of Social Security benefits cuts, including efforts to raise the retirement age. Of note, Clinton recently tweeted “I won’t cut Social Security. As always, I’ll defend it, and I’ll expand it.”
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Trump previously proposed raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 from 67. But he backed away from that stance last year and has since called for infusing Social Security with cash by canceling foreign aid to anti-American countries. Read Is Donald Trump’s new plan for Social Security crazy?

According to SocialSecurityWorks.org, Trump has criticized Republicans for supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and has said he won’t cut benefits, but will instead strengthen them by growing the economy. This is a departure from his position in a book he wrote in 2000, where he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and said it should be privatized, according to Lacy Crawford, a communications director for SocialSecurityWorks.org .

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-candidates-plan-to-fix-social-security-2016-02-16