How To Make Social Security Stronger
Something like 70% of voters cast their ballots just based on one factor: political party. That’s it; no need to pay any attention to all that expensive communication from candidates and their proponents; no need to open that political mail or watch those ads on TV or social media. Speaking of which… this is one of the latest social media ads Blue America is running on behalf of the progressive candidate, Aaron Regunberg, in Rhode Island. (You can contribute to his campaign here, if you’d like to see another progressive in Congress, rather than another corporate Dem.)
Next month’s Democratic special election primary will determine who the next congressman from RI-01 is, a district with a D+32 partisan lean. There isn’t much we or anyone else can put in an ad to persuade a voters who hasbn’t been paying attention. Primary voters tend to pay a little more attention than general election voter. They tend to be part of that 30% which doesn’t just vote because of party alone.
But how do candidates in a crowded primary— in this case there are 12 Democrats running, several with big war chests— distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. It doesn’t hurt that well-known significators like Bernie, Jamie Raskin, Ro Khanna, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, Jan Schakowsky, Steve Donziger, Jane Fonda, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Working Families Party and local progressive politicians like state Senators Tiara Mack and Linda Ujifusa have come out strongly for Aaron.
More impressive, in my opinion, is the way he has tried to lay out specifically what he plans to accomplish in Congress. A great deal of that has been about Climate Change. Yesterday, he talked specifically about how he hopes to strengthen Social Security. He wrote that “For so many Rhode Islanders, Social Security is an integral part of being able to live and retire with dignity. I’ve experienced the impact of these programs firsthand. My father passed away before I was born, and Social Security survivors benefits helped my mom raise my sister and me. With the cost of living rising, it’s not enough just to defend Social Security from MAGA Republicans. We need to expand Social Security benefits to put more money in the pockets of seniors so they can actually keep pace with rising costs.”
To accomplish this goal, Regunberg argues for lifting the Social Security payroll tax, which allows a billionaire to pay the same amount into Social Security as a middle class family making $160,200 per year. By applying the payroll tax on all income above this level, the U.S. could:
Provide a $1,300 benefit increase for all seniors making less than $16,000 a year
Significantly increase cost-of-living adjustments by establishing a Consumer Price Index for Seniors that more accurately indexes benefits to the inflation experienced by the elderly so seniors don’t get squeezed
Raising the minimum benefits for retiring low-income workers so the people who need the benefits most are taken care of
Guarantee that Social Security will pay the benefits owed to every living American
“We must also take urgent action to lower the price of prescription drugs,” said Regunberg. “I was just at an event at a senior center this week and was talking to two women, Sherry and Muriel, who were describing how a ridiculous hike in the cost of their medication was making them unsure if they’d be able to keep filling their prescriptions. It is obscene that folks who’ve worked their whole lives are made to scramble to get basic healthcare, while Big Pharma is raking in billions of dollars.”
During his time in the General Assembly, Regunberg introduced legislation to control prescription drug prices. In Congress he would fight to:
Place a price cap on critical prescription drugs
End the practice of offering private pharmaceutical corporations exclusive licenses to produce and distribute drugs based on publicly-funded research
Utilize federal march-in rights to publicly produce drugs that were developed through taxpayer-funded research and sell them at cost, similar to California’s recent program to produce its own affordable insulin
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