President Barack Obama says yes, we should. Speaking Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, he called for increasing Social Security benefits for both current and future retirees:
We can’t afford to weaken Social Security. We should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, 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.
We have made expanding Social Security a top priority since becoming the first national organization to call for across-the-board benefit increases and an improved cost-of-living adjustment that accounts for the higher health care costs seniors face. Many national leaders and other organizations have since come out in support of improving Social Security benefits. More than a dozen bills expanding benefits have been introduced in the most recent Congress.
This was the first time Obama has called for a broad expansion of Social Security to address the growing retirement security crisis facing working people. In doing this, he noted that simply telling people to save more will not work in an economy in which so many families are struggling to make ends meet and employers have eliminated real pensions:
But look, let’s face it: A lot of Americans don’t have retirement savings. Even if they’ve got an account set up, they just don’t have enough money at the end of the month to save as much as they’d like because they’re just barely paying the bills. Fewer and fewer people have pensions they can really count on, which is why Social Security is more important than ever.
