John,

When Washington politicians talk about Social Security cuts, they almost always use coded language, saying that they want to “change,” “adjust,” or even “save” the system. That’s because cutting Social Security is incredibly unpopular with voters of all political stripes.¹

When corporate-friendly politicians use those words, they are trying to signal to elite media and billionaire donors that they are “very serious people” who are open to cutting Social Security benefits, without giving away the game to voters.

Social Security Works is fighting back against the billionaire class and their bought and paid for politicians, who want to cut your earned benefits. Chip in $5 today to help!

One of those billionaires, Pete Peterson, spent almost half a billion dollars on a decades-long crusade to destroy Social Security and Medicare.² Peterson died in 2018, but his money lives on in the form of think tanks like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which relentlessly advocate for benefit cuts while insisting that they are neutral arbiters because they are “non-partisan.”

Non-partisan and non-ideological are two very different things, but the media has an unfortunate tendency to treat them as one and the same. The CRFB and similar groups are zealously committed to an ideology of cutting the American people’s earned benefits.

We don’t have any billionaire donors, only grassroots supporters like you! Donate to Social Security Works today to power our fight to protect and expand Social Security.

In 2018, Joe Biden gave a speech calling for “adjustments” to Social Security. PolitiFact, a DC fact checking site, dinged the Bernie Sanders campaign as “false” for pointing out that this was a reference to benefit cuts. PolitiFact interviewed a staffer from the CRFB, but didn’t talk to any experts who support protecting and expanding Social Security.

Bernie’s campaign is absolutely right, and PolitiFact is wrong. When a politician supports protecting and expanding Social Security, they say so. When they want to cut benefits, they say “adjustments.”

It’s easy for people in a DC elite bubble, working for think tanks or newspaper editorial boards, to support cutting Social Security. They have no idea what it’s like to live on the average Social Security benefit of less than $18,000 a year.

But in the rest of the country, it’s a very different story. People love Social Security. It’s the only thing keeping their grandparents, their friend with a disability, and their young neighbors who recently lost a parent out of poverty. Grassroots activists across the country, working with congressional champions like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, put pressure on Democratic politicians and changed the conversation on Social Security.

Chip in today to help us keep lifting up the voices of Americans across the country who want to protect and expand—never cut—Social Security’s earned benefits.

After years of hard work, Democrats are united in support of expanding, not cutting, Social Security. Ninety percent of House Democrats are co-sponsors of the Social Security 2100 Act, which would increase benefits and keep the system strong into the next century. Every major Democratic presidential candidate has a plan to expand Social Security.

That includes Biden, who is responding to activist pressure by running on a plan to modestly expand Social Security benefits. We’ve moved him along with the rest of the Democratic Party, but we’ll need your help to keep holding politicians accountable—and bring more on board.

Donate to Social Security Works today so we can keep fighting the DC elite bubble and demanding that politicians listen to the American people.

Thank you for your support,

Alex Lawson
Social Security Works