Expand Social Security now says President Obama

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In perhaps the clearest sign that not just the Democratic Party, but the nation as a whole have become more receptive to a progressive position, President Obama spoke out on Wednesday in favor of expanding Social Security benefits.

"It is time we finally made Social Security more generous and increase the benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they have earned," Obama said in Elkhart, Indiana, during a speech in which he spoke against Republican economic policies.

With the great majority of workers no longer eligible for pension plans, and most workers forced to depend on 401K plans that have produced returns far lower than expected, a “dignified retirement” seems to constantly recede from many Americans. In 1960, more than a third of all elderly Americans lived in poverty but the poverty rate fell sharply from 1960 to 1995 as Social Security provided exactly the kind of buffer it had been designed to create. However, since then the poverty rate as once again began to tick up as more Americans face retirement without pensions and Social Security benefits have been too small to address the gap.

Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have called for an increase in Social Security. This is a significant change from the last two presidential cycles, when Republicans treated Social Security as a “failed program,” and Democrats were on the defensive. In 2011, President Obama offered a deal to Republicans that would have cut Social Security benefits as part of a Grand Bargain. As with nearly everything in the last eight years, Republicans rebuffed Obama’s offer. That offer is clearly no longer on the table.

"Retirement insecurity is an obvious problem for middle- and low-income families and both Social Security and Medicare are highly efficient programs," said Jared Bernstein, a former Obama White House economic adviser and now a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. "It took a while, but I think Democrats have come to realize that defending, strengthening, and even expanding these security-enhancing programs is what makes them Democrats.”

Even Donald Trump has said that he wouldn’t cut Social Security. Though that may not mean much.