Why Not Expand Policies That Already Work?

Atrios makes the case that increasing Social Security benefits should be a major progressive cause in the future/now. I couldn't agree more.

There is a weird fetish in "liberal" policy circles that wants to create new awesome solutions rather than expand on the extremely successful polices we already have. Obamacare was a perfect example of this. Rather than focusing on measures to reduce all health care costs and a medicare buy in, all the liberal groups got together and created this Rube Goldberg device of policy making that will be almost assuredly less efficient even if it manages overcomes seemingly endless hurdles that stand in the way of it's full implementation. We created something called a "public option" when we had one of the most popular government programs that people know and love (medicare), already in existence, just waiting to be used. Madness.

We can't afford to make the same mistake with social security. People's retirements are less secure than ever, and we should be looking to expand social security benefits to higher levels. It's the most popular program in the history of the US government. Maybe we should use that to our advantage.