The platform, heavily influenced by Sanders, who calls it the “most progressive” in the party’s history, in close collaboration with Hillary Clinton’s camp, rejects any notion that Social Security should be restructured to prevent a cash crisis or a federal debt crisis.
Instead, the newly minted campaign document would extend the Social Security trust fund’s solvency 50 years or more by lifting a cap on the payroll tax to force wealthier Americans to assume a much larger share of the program’s cost. It would also increase average monthly benefits to seniors and recast cost-of-living adjustments to make it more advantageous to seniors with substantial medical expenses.
Although the platform document is fuzzy on the specifics of these changes, Sanders has proposed a $65 a month average increase in Social Security benefits, higher cost of living adjustments and lifting more seniors out of poverty by boosting the minimum benefits paid to low-income seniors.
“Democrats are proud to be the party that created Social Security, one of the nation’s most successful and effective programs. Without Social Security, nearly half of America’s seniors would be living in poverty,” the platform document states. “We will fight every effort to cut, privatize, or weaken Social Security, including attempts to raise the retirement age, diminish benefits by cutting cost-of-living adjustments, or reducing earned benefits.”
