Former Vice President Joe Biden. (Photo: Andrew Cuatro/Biden campaign)
In laying out his economic priorities, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the former vice president, vowed to reject "every effort to cut, privatize or weaken" Social Security, including attempts to raise the retirement age, diminish benefits by cutting cost-of-living adjustments, or reduce earned benefits.
Biden's 110-page economic manifesto, released after his visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, called Social Security "the most enduring thread in our nation's social safety net." Biden pledged to "enact policies to make Social Security more progressive, including meaningfully increasing minimum benefit payments, increasing benefits for long-duration beneficiaries, and protecting surviving spouses from benefit cuts."
Democrats, Biden said, will also "act to protect public and private pensions" and "equalize the network of retirement saving tax breaks so that working people can build their nest eggs faster."
Making college more affordable and authorizing up to $10,000 in student debt relief per borrower also topped Biden's list.
As to bouncing back from the pandemic, Biden said: "The economy is not working for the American people. In a matter of weeks, the abject failure of President Trump and his Administration to competently respond to the COVID-19 pandemic erased all the job gains made since the Obama-Biden administration pulled the country out of the Great Recession, and plunged the economy into recession once more."
Solving the public health crisis posed by the pandemic, Biden said, "is the surest way to get the economy back on track."
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Melanie Waddell
Melanie is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of ThinkAdvisor. Her ThinkAdvisor coverage zeros in on how politics, policy, legislation and regulations affect the investment advisory space. Melanie’s coverage has been cited in various lawmakers’ reports, letters and bills, and in the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule in 2024. In 2019, Melanie received an Honorable Mention, Range of Work by a Single Author award from @Folio. Melanie joined Investment Advisor magazine as New York bureau chief in 2000. She has been a columnist since 2002. She started her career in Washington in 1994, covering financial issues at American Banker. Since 1997, Melanie has been covering investment-related issues, holding senior editorial positions at American Banker publications in both Washington and New York. Briefly, she was content chief for Internet Capital Group’s EFinancialWorld in New York and wrote freelance articles for Institutional Investor. Melanie holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Towson University. She interned at The Baltimore Sun and its suburban edition.
