Here’s what I don’t understand. Does anyone seriously think that people are saving enough for retirement? Moreover, no one makes any money off their money anymore. If you want to make interest, you have to invest, and your investment has to be at least somewhat risky. So, why would anyone talk about cutting people’s Social Security benefits when it is as clear as day that the current benefits are going to be completely inadequate for a whole lot of people?
Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way, said Friday morning that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) backing of a plan to expand Social Security compelled him and the president of the group to hit back with a Wall Street Journal op-ed lambasting the plan and economic populism.
“The impetus was really — we saw after the most recently, this push that okay, it’s time to really move the national Democratic Party to a much more liberal agenda, in this case, Senator Warren was the standard bearer — she’s on the cover of a lot of magazines,” he said in an interview on Sirius XM with Ari Rabin-Havt. “We were a bit alarmed by that.”
He added that Warren was an excellent senator from Massachusetts but questioned whether she could be good for the party nationally.
“That Social Security plan was the final moment for us,” he said.
“That Social Security plan had been out there but really languishing — because Senator Warren has such a powerful compelling voice, she started talking about it, and it suddenly it became much more talked about and viable alternative.”
These Third Way folks have been flogging this horse for decades at this point. It is a dead horse.