To hear Donald Trump tell it, Americans concerned about what he’ll do with Social Security and Medicare have nothing to worry about.
“I said to people we’re not touching Social Security, other than we make it more efficient. But the people are going to get what they’re getting,” the Republican said during his latest “Meet the Press” appearance. When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked, “Entitlements off the table?” Trump initially responded, “And we’re not raising ages or any of that stuff,” before adding, in reference to possibly cutting the social insurance programs, “I won’t do it.”
Part of the problem is that there’s often an enormous gap between what the president-elect says he’ll do and what he actually does. Making matters worse, his record on the issue isn’t nearly as sterling as he likes to pretend.
And then, of course, there are congressional Republicans to consider.
Republican Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri appeared on Fox Business this week, for example, and talked about his ideas for tackling the national debt:
And so we’ve got to right the ship, and it’s going to mean cuts. It’s going to mean cuts to the 24 percent of the discretionary spending that we have, and it’s also going to mean looking long-term at the front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Literally one day after Trump said, in apparent reference to Social Security, that he’s against “raising ages or any of that stuff,” Alford went on to say during the same on-air interview, “[O]n the front end on Social Security, I think there’s a way, when people are living longer, they’re retiring later, then on the front end we can move that retirement age back a little bit.”
If comments like these were limited to just one member of the U.S. House with a relatively low national profile, they’d be easier to overlook, but it’s not nearly that simple.
Last week, for example, Republican Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia also appeared on Fox Business and said, “We’re gonna have to have some hard decisions. We’ve gotta bring in the Democrats and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on.”
What’s more, my MSNBC colleague Ryan Teague Beckwith noted that Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah published a lengthy social media thread last week, questioning the constitutionality and practicality of Social Security, while comparing the program to a “Ponzi scheme.” The claims were quickly amplified by conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk, who’s helping lead the incoming White House’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So where does that leave us? Americans can apparently listen to Trump, whose record on Social Security and Medicare is littered with contradictions and flip-flops, or they can listen to the president-elect’s allies, many of whom seem awfully eager to cut the popular social insurance programs now that Election Day has come and gone. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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