(Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from a new book, “Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All,” published by The New Press, 2015, all rights reserved. Order a copy here.)

Democrats and their supporters must stand up to Republicans who want to dismantle or cut Social Security benefits – and then they must expand, not curtail, those benefits, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said Tuesday.

Today marks 79 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Social Security into law on August 14th, 1935. Today, our Social Security system celebrates nearly eight decades of ensuring basic economic security for America's workers and their families when wages are lost as the result of death, disability, or old age.

Most Americans want better benefits, and they agree on how to pay for them. As strengthening Social Security becomes a higher profile issue in a handful of toss-up U.S. Senate races, a new poll of likely 2014 voters in those states and nationwide finds overwhelming support to boost benefits by taxing all Americans equally.