Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who backed an expansion of Social Security this week, said on MSNBC Wednesday that increased benefits would help a middle class that has been "hammered for a generation."
Warren on Monday threw her support behind expanding Social Security benefits, joining Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in a growing push to calculate benefits through an index called CPI-E that will increase payments to meet the needs of recipients.
"I believe fundamentally we are a people who believe that anyone should be able to retire with dignity, and that's what Social Security is about," Warren said on The Rachel Maddow Show. "People who work all their lives and pay into it should have a minimum level that they don't fall beneath."
Warren rehashed her argument that it would only take modest adjustment to the current Social Security system to make it sustainable beyond the 20 years she says the program's $2.7 trillion surplus will cover.
"This is partly about math," Warren said. "But it's partly about our values." She said expanding Social Security is "about what kind of a people we are, what kind of a country we are trying to build."
"It's about fighting for the minimum wage," she continued. "It's about fighting for dignity when people retire. It's about fighting for a world that we built together because we believe that when we do, that we've all got a better chance, we've all got a fighting chance to make something, and that's what we'll do."
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