Bernie Sanders Social Security benefit increase proposal, Digi Mart USA News: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Saturday that one of his top priorities, once he takes control of the chamber’s Social Security Subcommittee in January, will be to lift the cap on taxable income that pays for the program and increase benefit payments by at least $2,400 per year.
Sanders said the way to extend “Social Security’s solvency for generations” is to raise the limit at which wealthy people stop paying into the program, which is currently set at $184,500. He argued that extremely wealthy individuals should pay in at the same rate as working-class taxpayers.
By “demanding that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes,” Sanders said the government would be able to pay out higher benefits each month and strengthen the program well into the future.
In the wake of Tuesday’s midterm election results, which Sanders’s allies described as a major defeat for the Republican Party, Nancy Altman, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said the outcome was a major win for the future of Social Security, which she called the nation’s most successful anti-poverty program.
Altman said Social Security was “on the ballot” in the midterms and that the message sent by U.S. voters was “resoundingly clear: Hands off our earned benefits!” She said Democrats “ran on making the wealthy pay their fair share into Social Security,” and now have a chance to show the American people what that looks like.
“In the next two years,” Altman said, “lawmakers should vote on legislation that expands benefits with no cuts. This legislation should restore Social Security to long-range balance by requiring the wealthiest Americans, like Elon Musk, to finally start paying their fair share.”
Altman also called on Democrats to use their new power in Congress to investigate Musk and his associates in the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which she accused of committing “the largest data theft in American history” by stealing Social Security data.
“Democrats should seek to reverse all the damage that Donald Trump and his cronies have done to the Social Security Administration,” she concluded, “so that the American people can get the first-rate service they have paid for and deserve.”
