Social Security Works is Fighting to Protect and Expand Social Security’s Earned Benefits

Note from the CREDO team: This March, Social Security Works is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO community will help SSW fight to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are protected from reckless cuts and pressure lawmakers to pledge to never cut these critical programs.

Read this important blog post from SSW’s Executive Director Alex Lawson, then click here to visit CREDODonations.com to cast your vote to help determine how we distribute our monthly grant to this organization and our other amazing grantees this March.

Social Security Works advocates on behalf of the 66 million Americans who rely on their earned Social Security benefits, and the millions more Americans who will rely on these earned benefits in the future. While Republican politicians including Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have released plans to cut, privatize, and destroy Social Security, Social Security Works is fighting back.

Social Security is a promise between generations that brings people of all backgrounds together. Not surprisingly, Social Security is wildly popular among Americans of all political persuasions. More Americans believe in the Loch Ness Monster than support cutting Social Security’s earned benefits!

The challenge is holding members of Congress accountable so that they listen to the will of their voters, not to Wall Street donors. To that end, Social Security Works and its coalition partners are demanding that every member of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — make a public pledge: I will never cut Social Security and Medicare under any circumstances.

Getting politicians on the record is important because Republicans, along with a small group of corporate-friendly Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), are trying to cut benefits behind closed doors.

Republicans realize that their quest to defund and dismantle Social Security will never win the support of the American people. This is why Republicans want to force Democrats to go behind closed doors and cut benefits together, so that voters won’t know which party to blame. They are trying to use the must-pass debt ceiling increase as leverage to do so.

When Donald Trump was President, Republicans let the debt ceiling increase three times without it ever becoming a negotiation. But before the midterm elections, Senator John Thune (the second-most powerful Senate Republican) and Speaker Kevin McCarthy both called for Republicans to hold the debt ceiling hostage for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. While those top Republicans are now backing off that call, fast-tracked commissions that would allow for Social Security cuts without Republican fingerprints are still being discussed.

Whether it takes place through a commission or through a hostage negotiation, a cut is still a cut. The Biden Administration has rightfully called these commissions “death panels” for Social Security and Medicare. This is a huge change from a decade ago, when far more Democrats were open to such a commission. 

When Social Security Works was founded, the DC conventional wisdom was dominated by talk of cutting Social Security, with absolutely no room for imagining benefits could be expanded. Now, nearly all Democrats are united in support of expanding benefits and even many Republicans are running away (at least rhetorically) from their support for cuts.

That’s how much Social Security Works has changed the conversation over the past decade, and we are never going to back down.

We will never let Republicans destroy Social Security and Medicare.

We will fight to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are expanded, and we won’t let the people trying to cut the earned benefits of the American people hide behind mealy-mouthed weasel words.

The best way to save Social Security from its enemies is to keep pressuring every politician in Washington D.C. to take the No Cuts pledge and raise the debt ceiling without hostage-taking.

Go to DontCutSocialSecurity.org to find out if your member has taken the pledge. If they have not, call them, email them, and hold rallies outside their offices, all with one message: Commit to protecting our earned Social Security and Medicare benefits!