Donald Trump Talks Social Security Cuts, Not That He'd Ever Cut Social Security, Unless He Does
The answer is to drill more oil.
Joe Biden made Republicans all mad again by accurately saying in his State of the Union address that they salivate at the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare, but that if they tried, “I will stop you.” After that, Donald Trump had a chance Monday to say on national cable TV that heavens no, he would never think of cutting Social Security or Medicaid, that is his solemn vow.
Bet you can guess what he didn’t say on national cable TV Monday.
On a call with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program, which we were disappointed years ago to learn is not about amusing trained parrots, Trump was asked what he would do about the long-term solvency of the programs. Would he raise the retirement age? Cut benefits? Raise payroll taxes, or increase the income cap on them so the very rich paid more? (Millionaires will zip past the $168,600 limit this month and pay no more into the program the rest of the year.) Maybe go all Bernie Sanders & Liz Warren, and apply a Social Security tax to capital gains?
Oh, stop, Dok, don’t be redonkulous. Trump heard anchor Joe Kernan mention “cutting” and “entitlements” in the question and went straight to there.
Trump explained, in that signature rambling, “never very specific” way of his, that you could save lots of money by cutting, so much cutting:
“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting. And in terms of, also, the theft of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements — there’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”
So you can do lots of cutting, but immediately after saying that, Trump seemed to realize what he’d blurted out and added that he doesn’t necessarily agree with himself.
Trump went on with some incoherent blather about how “they” — the Biden administration we assume — will actually “end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak” and we have 50 percent inflation, did you know that? That’s his expert opinion.
Biden jumped on Trump’s comments, because he has a hell of a comms team, quote-tweeting the clip and pledging “Not on my watch.”
Then of course, because Donald Trump never actually says anything, his campaign insisted that they were victims of a terrible smear campaign since the tweet didn’t include the full rambling comment. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung cited a “Trump War Room” post on Twitter that insisted, “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste,” so there.
Mind you, the campaign couldn’t actually specify what “theft and the bad management” in Social Security the Great Man had in mind, and as The New Republic points out, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, Project 2025, insists that America’s “deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem.” No, they aren’t suggesting applying Social Security taxes to capital gains, either.”
Just for additional stupid, Trump campaign spox Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Donald Trump is a champion of Social Security and Medicare (but please ignore his multiple proposals to cut Medicaid and to eliminate Obamacare). She added that the
only candidate who poses a threat to Social Security and Medicare is Joe Biden — whose mass invasion of countless millions of illegal aliens will, if they are allowed to stay, cause Social Security and Medicare to buckle and collapse.
Why, no, undocumented immigrants aren’t allowed to use either program, although when they illegally use a fake Social Security number in their job applications, they pay into the system while never seeing the benefits.
So hooray, Donald Trump uttered a lot of vague unclear stuff about maybe cutting Social Security, or just “waste” in Social Security if his people can find any, or actual benefits he’ll decide are wasteful, and you can take that to the bank just like any other bad check he writes.
[CNBC / TNR / Vox / Marketplace]
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Social Security is about the most efficient delivery system possible. I think the admin costs are (or were not too long ago) about 3%.
If you think they're "wasting" money on humans who work at the agency, spend an hour and a half on hold to ask a question sometime.
"Oh, stop, Dok, don’t be redonkulous. "
Surely, that should be "redokulous".