9 Ways Democrats Have Gotten More Progressive In Just 4 Years

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9 Ways Democrats Have Gotten More Progressive In Just 4 Years

BY ALICE OLLSTEIN & BRYCE COVERT at Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/05/3795393/platform-progress/

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5. “Americans should earn at least $15 an hour and have the right to form or join a union.”

The current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised since 2009. Democrats have long demanded that it be increased, and in the 2012 DNC platform mentioned raising it three times. But until recently, the demands were modest, and the previous party platform didn’t specify how much workers deserve to paid. In 2013, President Obama called for an increase to $9 an hour. But fast food workers started a movement when they went on strike in November of 2012 to demand they be paid at least $15 an hour.
Since then, the movement has spread rapidly and notched a series of victories: California and New York passed laws this year mandating statewide $15 minimum wages, and Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill that would increase the federal wage to that level last year.

6. “Democrats will make sure that the United States finally enacts national paid family and medical leave.”

The United States is extremely lonely on the national stage when it comes to our lack of a guarantee that workers can take paid family leave to care for new children or sick family members. The only guarantee is that those at large enough employers can take 12 weeks of unpaid time off. In 2012, Democrats supported expanding that unpaid leave to more people and working with states that have been passing their own paid programs. But in 2013, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the first bill to create a paid family leave program for the entire country. In the 2016 race, nearly all Democratic presidential candidates supported a national program.

7. “We will make sure Social Security’s guaranteed benefits continue for generations to come by asking those at the top to pay more.”

Social Security faces a long-term financing problem if things stay the way they are. By 2020, without action from Congress, payments will exceed the income it gets from payroll taxes, according to the latest report from its trustees. The 2012 DNC platform pledged to “find a solution to protect Social Security for future generations.” This year it has landed on an easy one: raising taxes on the wealthy. Currently, any money someone earns over $117,000 is exempt from the payroll taxes. That overwhelmingly helps the wealthy — the top richest people in the country stop paying into the program shortly after the year begins — while starving the fund of revenue. Eliminating the cap, which would impact just 6 percent of American workers, would almost entirely close Social Security’s funding gap for the next 75 years. Others in the party have sought to go further, though, and actually try to expand benefits, rather than keep the status quo that leaves many retirees in poverty.

8. “Democrats believe we must make it easier to vote not harder.”

In 2012, the Democratic platform boasted about the work the Obama Administration had done thus far on protecting voting rights and pledged to continue. But in 2013, the Supreme Court took away the federal government’s best tool for ensuring access to the ballot box: Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Since then, more than a dozen Republican-controlled states have passed laws that have made voting more difficult, especially for traditionally Democratic voting groups such as students and people of color.



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