The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an influential nonprofit advocacy group for seniors, will endorse U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz on Tuesday in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
Schatz has made protecting Social Security an issue in the primary against U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who has countered that she too wants to defend the entitlement program. The congresswoman has said that Schatz is needlessly scaring seniors at a time when cuts to Social Security have fallen out of favor as a deficit-reduction strategy.
But Max Richtman, president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based group, said there are differences between Schatz and Hanabusa on the issue.
Richtman, who is scheduled to appear at a news conference Tuesday morning at Schatz’s downtown campaign headquarters, said Schatz is a co-sponsor of a bill by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, that would increase Social Security benefits. The bill would expand the benefit by about $65 a month, financed by lifting the $117,000 wage cap — the maximum amount of taxable earnings — so that higher-income taxpayers would pay a greater share of the entitlement.
Richtman also points to Hanabusa’s 2013 "yes" vote on a failed amendment by U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., that would have instructed President Barack Obama to use the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan as a guide on the deficit.
Hanabusa has said that while she and other centrist Democrats were open to aspects of Simpson-Bowles, which included a host of tax policy and entitlement changes, she never supported cuts to Social Security.
The national seniors group had urged the House to defeat the Schrader amendment, but Hanabusa was one of 75 lawmakers, and 54 Democrats, to support the amendment.
"But even more important than that is the leadership that the senator has shown on improving Social Security," Richtman said. "We’ve embarked on a campaign, we call it ‘Boost Social Security,’ and we’re really centering around the bill Harkin has introduced and Schatz has co-sponsored."
Richtman met with Schatz and Hanabusa before the seniors group decided to make the endorsement.
Political analysts have complained that interest groups in Washington have drawn such uncompromising lines on public policy that lawmakers are afraid to even entertain bipartisan recommendations, like a Simpson-Bowles plan, for fear of paying a political price.
"We don’t have our heads in the sand as a senior group. And we’re not saying, ‘Don’t ever do anything’" to change Social Security, Richtman said. "But there are proposals that I think can be looked at that would improve the program that do not reduce benefits and undermine the program.
"And Simpson-Bowles, I think, did (undermine the program)."
Peter Boylan, a spokesman for the Hanabusa campaign, said Monday in an email, "Congresswoman Hanabusa has voted time and again to protect Social Security and Medicare and will continue to do so, no matter what the Schatz camp insinuates."
