Rep. Bill Cassidy, who is the regular Republican running against Sen. Mary Landrieu (they’re joined by tea party candidate Rob Maness) showed his Republican stripes and his hostility to Social Security in a debate Tuesday night. Cassidy, of course, maintained that the way to preserve Social Security for seniors is to take it away from soon-to-be-seniors.
The most robust exchanges of the night took place when the three candidates argued about how to keep federal benefits for seniors—like Social Security and Medicare—solvent.
On Social Security, Cassidy is in favor of raising the minimum age for receiving Social Security benefits to 70 years old, but only for people who are currently young and can prepare for their retirement accordingly, he said.
Both Landrieu and Maness were adamant people should not have to wait until 70 to receive their Social Security payments. “People cannot work until they’re 70 and I think that is very bad policy,” Landrieu said.
Yep, it’s very bad policy, largely because most people can’t work until they’re 70. It’s a Social Security cut, plain and simple, and it’s a way to try to drive people into putting retirement savings into the stock market, in hopes that they’ll have something to live off of in the years that they can’t work and are waiting for benefits.
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Louisiana isn’t really known for its financial service industry, or any other huge white-collar industry. People there farm, they fish, they work on oil rigs. They can’t do that until they’re 70 years old. That’s something Cassidy, like pretty much every Republican, refuses to recognize.
