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WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) threw her increasingly high-profile name behind expanding Social Security benefits instead of reducing them, rejecting calls from those in both parties to cut payments as a way to trim 

Warren joins that includes Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who argue that rather than switch to a "chained" consumer price index that cuts retiree benefits, the nation should adopt CPI-E, which measures the actual cost of living for the elderly and would raise benefits to meet actual needs.
Chained CPI assumes that when prices rise, people switch to cheaper products. Proponents say the inflation measure should be reduced to account for that, meaning the government could pay people smaller cost-of-living adjustments.
But Warren blasted that approach in a Senate floor speech Monday, saying that retirement security has become a "crisis" in America in which two-thirds of seniors depend on Social Security for the majority of their income.
"Chained CPI falls short of the actual increases in costs that seniors face, pure and simple," Warren said. "Chained CPI? It’s just a fancy way of saying cut benefits."
She took special exception to a Month that called expanding Social Security "wrongheaded" and suggested the nation should instead be more concerned about the higher percentage of children living in poverty.
Warren said that argument of the debate.
"The suggestion that we have become a country where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong," Warren said. "This is about our values, and our values tell us that we don’t build a future by first deciding who among our most vulnerable will be left to starve.
"We don’t build a future for our children by cutting basic retirement benefits for their grandparents,"