Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Peter DeFazio just proposed increasing Social Security benefits by $200 per month―while extending the Social Security trust fund for another 75 years by making the wealthy pay their fair share.

This plan comes at a critical time. During the recent Senate hearing on Social Security expansion, Senator Lindsey Graham said that privatizing Social Security “might be part of the mix.”

The new plan to expand Social Security will:

• Extend the solvency of Social Security for 75 years by requiring the wealthiest American households to pay their fair share of taxes. Today, because of the earnings cap on Social Security taxes, a CEO making $20 million a year pays the same amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes $147,000 a year. This plan would lift this cap and subject all income above $250,000 to the Social Security payroll tax. Under this plan, over 93 percent of households would not see their taxes go up by one penny.

• Expand Social Security benefits across-the-board for current and new beneficiaries. Social Security benefits for current and existing recipients would be increased by $200 a month.

• Increase Cost-Of-Living-Adjustments (COLAs). This plan would more accurately measure the spending patterns for seniors by adopting the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). Older Americans, by and large, are not going out on spending sprees buying big screen TVs, laptops, or the latest high-tech gadgets. Rather, they spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care and prescription drugs and that would be reflected in the formula for calculating COLAs under this plan.

• Require millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share into Social Security. Currently, workers have 12.4 percent taken out of each paycheck and contributed to the Trust Fund, half paid by the employer and half by the worker. This plan would require the wealthy to pay the same 12.4 percent on their investment and business income, by increasing the net investment income tax by 12.4 percent and applying it to certain business income not already covered by payroll taxes.

• Improve the Special Minimum Benefit for Social Security recipients. Help low-income workers stay out of poverty by updating the Special Minimum Benefit to increase it and indexing the benefit level so that it is equal to 125 percent of the poverty line or about $17,000 for a single worker who had worked their full career.

• Restore student benefits up to age 22 for children of disabled or deceased workers, if the child is a full-time student in a college or vocational school. This plan would help educate children of deceased or disabled parents by restoring student benefits that were eliminated in 1983.

• Combine the Disability Insurance Trust Fund with the Old Age and Survivors Trust Fund, making Social Security’s funding more reliable for senior citizens and people with disabilities.

SIGN NOW and show your support for the Sanders, Warren, DeFazio plan to EXPAND Social Security!