How Republicans undermine Social Security’s future

Are Republicans really going to go for Social Security in this new Trump term? There is a lot to this that I want to talk about with you. Let’s start with just some basic numbers. Then we’ll talk about the willingness, maybe, of the incoming Trump administration to do something about Social Security. So first the numbers, Doge, the Department of government efficiency, Elon Musk, the big Ramaswamy to unelected bureaucrats, by the way, which they love to criticize. They are now the unelected bureaucrats they and others have talked about, we want to cut 2 trillion we want to cut $2.5 trillion from the federal budget. Now, simple math, the entire discretionary federal budget is 2.5 trillion. To cut two or 2.5 trillion from the federal budget, if you’re not going to touch mandatory spending like Social Security and Medicare, you have to cut 80 to 100% of discretionary spending. You all know, and I know, and Trump knows, everybody knows you’re not going to cut 80 to 100% of a federal budget that normally goes up a little bit every year. It’s just not going to happen, given that you can’t possibly cut two to 2.5 trillion from a federal budget where only 2.5 trillion is the discretionary spending. In a mathematical sense, we start to orient ourselves towards social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. So mathematically, if they really want to cut that much, they’re gonna have to look at it. Second part of this have, have Republicans been willing to do that in the past, the answer is yes, they’ve been willing to at least talk about it. George W Bush, for example, at one point, was talking about privatizing or moving it this way or moving it that way. And usually what happens is that the seniors absolutely revolt, and understandably so, as the possibility that their benefits will be cut becomes a reality, and that is a very difficult thing politically. Now, what have we heard? We heard Trump in March on CNBC say, essentially, we’re gonna look at everything we’ve heard from other members of the House and Senate say things like, nothing is sacrosanct, according to Ralph Norman or John Cornyn, the senator, acknowledge we’re going to try to cut the 2 trillion, which again, mathematically means Social Security probably has to be in there somewhere. And then you get to sort of like, the big scam or lie about Social Security that they love to tell, which is that it’s about to run out of money. This is so many layers deep that it really requires a little bit more analysis, but I’ll explain it to you this way. I’m gonna analogize first talking about education, then we’ll talk about Social Security. Many Republicans hate public education. They either hate it because they want the private sector to offer it, or they hate it because they think it’s become too woke, or they read the wrong books, or whatever. So one of the things that Republicans love to do is defund public education. When you defund something, it usually gets worse. When public education gets worse, then they go and say, look, it’s not very good. We should actually just, like, cancel the Department of Education. Just do private schools or charter schools or religious schools or whatever, they worsen it, and then use the fact that it’s getting worse to justify getting rid of it altogether. Postal Service, another example. Trump put in Louis to joy when he was president, the Postal Service slowed down. People were unhappy with the service, and then Republicans said, See, it’s not working that well. We should really privatize it, or just hire UPS or FedEx, or whatever the case may be. And of course, we all know they are the ones responsible for it getting worse. The way they do it with Social Security is they refuse to make the small tweaks that would really improve the health of Social Security, and then, by virtue of that, they point to it and they say it’s not working. Now the classic is always, the Social Security Trust Fund is going to run out. The reality is that if nothing is done in a decade, Social Security would only be able to pay out roughly 80% of the benefits that it is targeting to pay out. That’s if you do absolutely nothing, not exactly the crisis they are making it out to be. And we have some really easy fixes. One such fix is you raise the cap a little bit on Social Security earnings. Right now, if you make $160,000

a year, you pay into Social Security on all of your salary. If you make a million dollars a year, you pay into Social Security.

Security only on your first 160,000 of salary. If you make 100 million a year, you pay into Social Security only on your first 160,000 of salary. You see where I’m going. We don’t have to uncap it. If we simply said, you’re now going to pay in on your first 250 in earnings. That alone solves the problem. So part of it is, it’s not really the problem that they claim it is. Part of it is they’re trying to make it a worse problem, and then what they come around with is, you know, how we solve this? We privatize, we give fees to Wall Street. We take the money and put it in the stock market in a way that is far riskier for the people expecting and counting on these benefits. Do I think Trump is ultimately going to touch it? If I’m honest, I believe that Republicans will convince him that it is a political disaster, and he ultimately will leave it alone, not because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, but because he’ll be convinced that it’ll hurt him politically, which is all Trump cares about.