WASHINGTON, June 3 – In the midst of massive wealth and income inequality and at a time when poverty among seniors is rising, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today ripped former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for recently proposing massive cuts to Social Security.
“I have a hard time understanding what world Gov. Bush and his billionaire backers live in,” said Sanders, the founder of the Senate Defending Social Security Caucus.
“At a time when more than half of the American people have less than $10,000 in savings, it would be a disaster to cut Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age. It is unacceptable to ask construction workers, truck drivers, nurses and other working-class Americans to work until they are 68 to 70 years old before qualifying for full Social Security benefits, added Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee .
In an interview last Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Bush suggested raising the retirement age from 65 to 68 or 70.
“Jeb Bush’s plan to raise the retirement age is 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,” Sanders said.
| “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. The way to do that is to eliminate the cap on all income above $250,000 so that millionaires and billionaires pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as middle-class Americans. I have introduced legislation to do just that.” |
