Three GOP rivals oppose Trump on Social Security

DeSantis, Pence, Haley push cuts for young people

Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party’s leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program.

In recent comments as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Social Security will need to be revamped — but not for people near or in retirement.

Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch Social Security or Medicare — a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party’s views — and more recently hammered DeSantis for wanting to cut the program.

“When people say that we’re gonna somehow cut seniors, that is totally not true,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “Talking about making changes for people in their 30s and their 40s so the program’s viable — that’s a much different thing, and something I think there’s going to need to be discussion on.”

On Monday, Pence told Fox Business: “I’m glad to see another candidate in this primary has been willing to step up and talk about that.”

The positions the Trump rivals are taking suggest that even fiscally conservative candidates in the GOP presidential primary are reluctant to endorse cutting Social Security for seniors, highlighting just how much the party has shifted on the issue. Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was the party’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, had led the party in championing budget blueprints that would have entailed significant cuts to both Social Security and Medicare.

As the Republican Party becomes increasingly reliant on older voters for support and as Trump continues to exert heavy influence over the party’s beliefs, GOP policy makers have followed the former president’s lead in steering clear of proposals to cut the program, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, ruling that out in debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year with the White House.

But concentrating potential cuts on the young, as the Trump challengers have proposed, has its downsides as well. The candidates’ posture risks antagonizing young voters that have already become increasingly alienated from the Republican Party. And cutting benefits for younger people leaves the bulk of the problem unresolved, experts say, given that the Social Security funding crisis is projected to arrive decades before millennials receive their first checks.

“It clearly would not address the shortfall, or the short- to medium-term problem we’re going to have in 10 years or less,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Economists of both parties agree that Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, face funding crises if Congress does not act to shore up their finances somehow, either by reducing benefits or raising taxes. If no reforms are enacted, Social Security benefits for an estimated 60 million people will be cut by 20 percent starting in 2033, according to the most recent report of the boards of trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Medicare also faces an automatic benefit cut as soon as 2031, the report says.

President Biden has proposed increasing taxes on the rich and businesses to prevent Medicare from running out of funds. But the latest White House budget does not propose a solution for extending Social Security. Numerous congressional Democrats have called for trillions in new taxes to avoid the Social Security shortfall, as well.

Policy experts have long said it will likely take a mixture of reduced spending and higher taxes to address the funding shortage facing Social Security and Medicare. Social Security’s old age and survivors insurance trust fund is expected to be able to pay only 77 percent of benefits in 2033, which would likely lead to automatic payment reductions.

DeSantis’s message will likely soon be tested. Trump has released video messages tying DeSantis to House Republicans who wanted to cut Social Security and for pushing to raise the retirement age when the Florida governor served in Congress, although Trump has also expressed support in the past for raising the retirement age.