Why Is Social Security So Popular? | Sen. Bernie Sanders

Video Description

Ninety years ago this week, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating the most popular government program in our nation’s history. For nearly nine decades, through good times and bad, Social Security has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American on time and without delay. Before Social Security was signed into law, half of seniors in America lived in poverty. Today, although still way too high, that figure is 10%. Social Security is not, as Elon Musk has suggested, “the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Quite the opposite. It is the most successful government program in American history. A program that over 160,000 older and disabled Vermonters benefit from each year. And yet despite its success, President Trump and others have been working overtime to dismantle Social Security and undermine the confidence that the American people have in it. Since he took office, the Trump administration has fired at least 7,000 workers at the Social Security Administration, shut down Social Security field offices and made it more difficult for seniors and the disabled to receive the benefits they have earned over the phone. --- Senator Bernie Sanders is the senior senator from Vermont. He is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).