Democrat

The candidates in a battleground congressional district in Illinois disagreed about the impact for Social Security and Medicare of a Republican-passed plan crafted by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) during an Oct. 21 radio debate sponsored by AARP.

In their final scheduled debate, Arkansas’ two major-party candidates for the U.S. Senate vigorously slashed each other on Social Security and Medicare issues.

West Virginia’s two major-party candidates for the U.S. Senate support raising the Social Security wage base limit from its current level of $117,000, and in an Oct. 7 debate both voiced concern over the long-term financing of the program.

Americans are more divided along ideological lines - and animosity between Democrats and Republicans is deeper and more extensive - than at any time in the past 20 years, a new report from the Pew Research Center shows.

While a new Gallup Poll finds that voters 65 and older have moved from "a reliably Democratic to a reliably Republican group" over the past two decades, voters in the next-oldest age bracket - 50 to 64 - haven't followed suit and still show an outright preference for the Democratic Party.

These days we're rarely shocked when we learn that a politician has enjoyed lavish benefits at public expense or found some way to exploit public office for personal gain. That makes all the more remarkable the story of former U.S. Rep. Andrew "Andy" Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind.), who during his three…