John,

Odds are you spent last week watching election workers count ballots and network news anchors gesture frantically at maps. But Republicans like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich spent it plotting against your retirement.

How else do you explain Kasich’s immediate reaction on Saturday afternoon, moments after the major news outlets finally declared Joe Biden our President-elect? Right away, Kasich told CNN that the election “is an opportunity for Biden to talk about the center-right and center-left of this country and what can be achieved, because we have enormous problems with debt, Social Security, [and] Medicare.”¹

We are fighting back against this callous, opportunistic dishonesty. Chip in $7 to fight back against these lies and save Social Security from Republicans!

Even Ronald Reagan understood that Social Security doesn’t add a single penny to the deficit.² And voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose Social Security cuts. More Americans believe in Bigfoot than support cutting Social Security!³ The only people clamoring for cuts are Kasich, his fellow Republican politicians, and their billionaire donors.

Kasich’s comments are the latest attack in a decades-long war on our earned benefits. Conservatives have spent years bamboozling the country about the finances of Social Security and Medicare. And in the past, they’ve even gotten some Democrats to abandon the party’s proud legacy of protecting and expanding these programs.

When Democrats acceded to the right’s demand for austerity in the wake of the Great Recession, the consequences were devastating. We got a stimulus too small to make Americans whole and get the economy back into gear. We got “sequestration” that both undermined public services and gave us another obtuse, jargon-heavy reason to distrust politicians.

The austerity obsession accelerated a decades-long GOP project to muddy the waters for voters. Tens of millions of Americans lost track of which party was committed to protecting the benefits they’ve earned, and which one is desperate to destroy them.

Social Security Works ran a campaign to remind seniors who is on their side―and it worked! Now we have to make sure that Democrats don’t forget to fight for us. Chip in $7 today!

This summer, that confusion delivered what these ghouls have always wanted. President Trump froze the funding mechanism that keeps Social Security solvent, then started laying the groundwork to make that change permanent—and end Social Security payments by mid-2022.

Luckily, Trump didn’t just lose. He lost to a man who explicitly, repeatedly, and loudly promised to defend Social Security from such attacks.

Biden ran his first ad blasting Trump’s Social Security cuts in August.⁴ By mid-September, Biden had two more spots up promising to protect the “sacred promise” of Social Security.⁵ And in October, when campaigns amplify their strongest core arguments in the closing stretch, Biden put out two more brand-new ads pledging to guard your benefits.⁶ Biden’s promise to protect Social Security from Trump’s attacks was also a feature of nearly all his campaign speeches.

Biden ran on protecting and expanding Social Security. He drew seniors back to the Democratic side of the voting booth, including winning over a majority of voters over 65 in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

So why on earth would anyone in his party listen to Kasich’s austerity pitch?

If you’re a Democrat trying to figure out how to do the most good for the most people, Biden gave you your answer: Protect and expand Social Security. If you’re a Democrat trying to figure out how to win re-election, Biden gave you your answer: Protect and expand Social Security.

People like Kasich have watched Democrats wriggle in a political trap for decades.

President-elect Biden has a historic opportunity to escape that trap once and for all.

Biden must govern like he campaigned, and refuse to treat the people who want to raid Social Security in the middle of a pandemic like they’re honorable, decent men and women who can be reasoned with. Every Democrat in Congress must join him in holding that line.

We’re here to make sure that they do. If you can, please donate $7 today!

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Thanks,

Alex Lawson
Social Security Works