Advice from a Boomer:Wake Up You Older Voters Backing Biden! He's Going After Your (and Your Grandkids') Social Security

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By Dave Lindorff

Over the last few months I have written a couple of pieces, one aimed at Baby Boomers (my demographic cohort, as I'm 70), and one aimed at the Millennials (a group which includes both my kids, aged 26 and 35). Now I want to talk to those of you who are older than even myself let's call you the pre-Boomers folks born before 1945 and all in your mid-70s to 80s and 90s (and maybe a few centenarians!).

I want to address you because polls keep reporting that a fair minority of you, if not a slight majority, are still enamored of your fellow pre-Boomer Joe Biden.

Let me just first ask you: Why in hell would you be supporting a guy who over the past 40 years has repeatedly conspired with Republicans in various efforts to whack away or chip away at Social Security benefits? And not just yours, but even more seriously, at the benefits that your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids should be able to count on when you're gone.

Let me give you some examples of Biden's treachery. As the publication The Intercept reports, in an article I urge you to read (click here to see it), as early as 1984, Biden teamed up with arch-conservative Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, to call for a freeze on federal spending. As part of that deal the two senators offered a business-backed plan to include Social Security in the freeze. Since inflation, as you may recall, was raging at the time, had their plan passed your benefits today would be lower by all the inflation that occurred in the years that freeze would have been in effect, plus the compounding of those benefits you would have missed over the decades.

By way of example, consider that In just the two years 1984 and 1985, inflation rate was 4.32% and 3.56% respectively. Has Biden and Grassley passed their bill passed, and Social Security's benefit level were not adjusted for inflation for just those two years, the benefits paid out in 1986 would have been 8.2% lower than inflation. That would have meant an income loss of that amount for everyone on Social Security! Since the bill failed and there were upward cost-of-living adjustments not the fill inflation amount but about half of it, amounting to 4.4%. Had those adjustments 3.1% in 1985 and 1.3% in 1986 not been made though, your benefits today would be not just 4.4% lower than they are now, but 4.4% lower times all the subsequent lower benefits that would have been paid since then, compounded meaning perhaps 10-15% lower.

That's what your "Good old Joe" wanted. But that was only one of his bright and right-wing ideas to whack Social Security benefits for the disabled and the elderly retired. Read on"