Thursday, June 04, 2015
Sanders to Bush on Social
Security Cuts: 'What World Do You Live In?'
Bush's call to raise retirement age 'just a continuation of the
war that is being waged by the Republicans against working-class Americans in
order to reward billionaires on Wall Street,' says Sanders
"What kind of person, given vast inherited wealth and
power, sets about worsening the financial circumstances of most
Americans?" asks analyst Richard Eskow. (Photo: World Affairs Council of
Philadelphia/flickr/cc)
As older Americans face a looming "retirement
crisis," presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination
Bernie Sanders has come out swinging against undeclared GOP rival Jeb Bush, who
recently suggested raising the retirement age to 68 or 70.
"I have a hard time understanding what world Gov. Bush and
his billionaire backers live in," said
Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), founder of the Senate Defending Social Security Caucus.
"When the average Social Security benefit is just $1,328 a month, and more
than one-third of our senior citizens rely on Social Security for virtually all
of their income, our job must be to expand benefits, not cut them."
"It reflects a callous insensitivity toward working
Americans, a lofty patrician blindness toward the lives of the hoi
polloi."
—Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future
—Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future
The Center for Economic and Policy Research has stated
that raising the retirement age is a benefit cut, since workers would have to
pay more in to get the same level of benefits.
The former Florida governor, who will reportedly
announce on June 15 that he is officially
running for president, made the statements Sunday on CBS's "Face
the Nation."
|
"I
think it needs to be phased in over an extended period of time," Bush
said of raising the retirement age. "We need to look over the horizon
and begin to phase in, over an extended period of time, going from 65 to 68
or 70. ... And that, by itself, will help sustain the retirement system for
anybody under the age of 40."
|
In keeping with the Republican Party's "anti-elderly"
platform, Bush's remark indicates that he's privileged and "out of
touch," wrote
Campaign for America's Future senior fellow Richard Eskow on Monday. "It
reflects a callous insensitivity toward working Americans, a lofty patrician
blindness toward the lives of the hoi polloi. What kind of person, given vast
inherited wealth and power, sets about worsening the financial circumstances of
most Americans—without even bothering to learn what those circumstances
are?"
In a separate piece published this
week, Eskow noted that, along with Bush, most leading Republican
presidential candidates are pushing cuts to Social Security, with only former
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee opposed to such cuts.
Sanders, who supports expanding benefits as opposed to cutting
them, described Bush's plan as "just a continuation of the war that is
being waged by the Republicans against working-class Americans in order to
reward billionaires on Wall Street."
The senator has proposed
legislation that would eliminate the cap on all taxable income above
$250,000 so that millionaires and billionaires pay the same percentage of their
income into Social Security as middle-class Americans.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment