To hear Donald Trump tell it, Americans don’t have to worry about what he’s going to do with Social Security and Medicare.
“I told people we’re not touching Social Security other than making it more efficient. But the people will get what they get,” the Republican said during his latest “Meet the Press” appearance. When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked, “Criminal rights off the table?” Trump initially responded, “And we’re not raising the age or anything like that,” before adding, referring to a possible cut to Social Security programs, “I won’t do it.”
Part of the problem is that there is often a huge gap between what the president-elect says he will do and what he actually does. What makes matters worse is that his track record in this area is not nearly as good as he likes to make it out to be.
And then of course there are the Republicans in Congress to consider.
For example, Republican Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri appeared on Fox Business this week and talked about his ideas for tackling the national debt:
And so we have to right the ship, and that will mean cuts. It means cuts to the 24 percent of discretionary spending that we have, and it also means looking at the long-term front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Literally one day after Trump, apparently referring to Social Security, said he was against “raising the age or something like that,” Alford said during the same broadcast interview:[O]On the front of social security, I think there is a way: if people live longer and retire later, we can reduce the retirement age a bit on the front.’
If these kinds of comments were limited to just one member of the U.S. House of Representatives with a relatively low national profile, they would be more easily overlooked, but it’s not nearly that simple.
For example, last week, Republican Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia also appeared on Fox Business and said, “We’re going to have to make some tough decisions. We need to get the Democrats involved and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There are hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we know how to do it. We just have to have the courage to actually take on those challenges.”
Additionally, my MSNBC colleague Ryan Teague Beckwith noted that Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah published a lengthy thread on social media 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 helps run the new 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 eager to make cuts on the popular social security programs now that the elections have begun. The day has come and gone.
Watch this space.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
