Donald Trump’s to-do list doesn’t yet have a lot of check marks. The president’s push to overhaul the nation’s health care system hasn’t gone especially well, his tax plan faces an uphill climb, and the White House’s infrastructure plan doesn’t yet exist.
And so it came as something of a surprise a month ago when Trump declared at a cabinet meeting, “One thing we’re going to be looking at very strongly is welfare reform. That’s becoming a very, very big subject… We are going to be looking very, very strongly there for welfare reform. It’s going to be a very big topic under this administration.”
No one was entirely sure what this meant. Trump is clearly a little too fond of the word “very,” but the White House has had little to say about the president’s welfare plans.
The topic nevertheless came up again this week, when CNBC’s John Harwood sat down with Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council at Trump’s White House.
Harwood: Are you thinking that you’ll deal with that Social Security/Medicare/baby boomer retirement issue later by entitlement reform that reduces benefits?









