Driven by Campaign Populism, Democrats Unite on Expanding Social Security [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

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The Democrats’ new consensus was driven by the populist election-year politics of Senator Bernie Sanders and by a realization that many workers have neither traditional pensions nor any significant retirement savings.

Mr. Sanders campaigned hard on promises to expand Social Security. Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, helped set the tone as well, breaking with Republican orthodoxy by vowing not to cut Social Security benefits. That position puts him potentially at odds with Republican lawmakers eager to rein in entitlement programs, though an aide has suggested that he might be flexible on the issue.

The Democrats’ proposals would amount to the biggest changes in Social Security since 1983, when the program faced a financial crisis and Congress enacted measures recommended by a bipartisan commission headed by Alan Greenspan. To save the program, spending was trimmed, taxes were raised and the eligibility age was set to increase slowly as the population ages.

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But the politics have shifted. Mr. Obama summarized the new Democratic consensus in a speech in Elkhart, Ind., on June 1.

“It’s time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned,” Mr. Obama said. “And we could start paying for it by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more.”

Democrats appear likely to include those proposals in their platform. “Senator Sanders, working with other progressives, has transformed the debate, so that expanding Social Security is today a central and consensus tenet of the Democratic Party,” Nancy J. Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group, said at a hearing of the platform-drafting committee on June 9.

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