Joe Biden and Donald Trump are strangely on the same page on the key issue in the 2024 White House election, aiming enormous, potentially campaign-defining punches at Republicans who they claim will slash retirement benefits.
Both the current and former presidents are driving their opponents into political retreats and attempting to airbrush prior support for reforms that could reduce Medicare and Social Security payouts.
Their technique reinforces a presidential election campaign axiom: candidates who even consider “reforming” these cherished entitlement programmes for seniors are playing with fire.
Trump has attacked his likely top competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as a “wheelchair over the cliff sort of guy” after voting for non-binding resolutions that would have raised the age at which most seniors may receive benefits to 70 as a member of the US House. He supports privatising Social Security as a congressional candidate in 2012, according to AWN’s KFile. Yet, in an attempt to assuage his concerns about the problem, DeSantis said in a Fox News interview last week, “We’re not going to tamper with Social Security.”
Trump has maintained his assaults despite his own planned changes to similar programmes as president. “We’re not going back to people who want to destroy our great Social Security system – even some in our own party; I wonder who that might be – who want to raise the minimum age for Social Security to 70, 75, or even 80 in some cases, and who want to cut Medicare to unrecognisable levels,” he said last Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
A few days later, another GOP candidate provided Biden and Trump with a new opportunity to exploit.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was compelled to clarify Thursday that her bold and unspecific proposal for raising the retirement age the day before was only meant to allude to Americans in their 20s, who are effectively a half-century away from taking their pensions. But her clarification will not shield the former UN ambassador from Trump, who is once again dividing his party by attacking candidates who have expressed conventional conservative doctrine on reducing or modifying programmes. Biden will undoubtedly highlight Haley’s words, claiming that only he can stop a covert GOP plan to eliminate important services.
“I guarantee you that I will not make any changes to Social Security or Medicare. “You can count on it,” the president said in Philadelphia on Thursday. “I will not let it be shredded or removed, as Trump Republicans have promised.”
At his “State of the Union” address last month, Biden pressed Republicans to certify on camera that they backed strengthening Social Security and Medicare. And he’s focusing his likely reelection campaign on the subject with the most robust campaign by a Democratic contender in years. Some of his criticisms are justified, while others take words by GOP leaders out of context. But they’re still effective, because both he and Trump understand that when conservatives say they don’t want to decrease Medicare or retirement benefits, they’re usually attempting to dig themselves out of a hole.
And Biden has the support of the American people. According to a recent Fox News poll, Democrats are favoured over Republicans to manage Medicare and Social Security (by 23 points) (by 16 points). It’s no surprise that Biden seems to enjoy this particular political battleground.
Is this an unsolvable problem?
The unusual convergence of attitudes – from a past president who attempted to overturn an election to a successor who sees his administration as critical to preserving democracy – reveals a great deal about each man’s political instincts, origins, and campaign tactics. It also underscores the changing character of the Republican Party, which Trump has pulled from its corporate, ideologically pure conservative foundations in order to form a new coalition that includes working-class people, frequently in the Midwest, and for which Biden is fighting hard.
In one sense, the potentially most contentious domestic issue in the next years should, of course, play a role in a presidential race. But, when candidates exploit it to incite their political supporters, it makes it even more difficult to solve in government. This is especially true of entitlements, which sliced through both party’s DNA and established the dividing lines between them for decades – at least until Trump came along and took over the GOP.
Democrats, particularly Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, have pushed to use government authority to protect the living standards and health care of less affluent and older Americans since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies from 1933 to 1945. Republicans, beginning with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, have progressively pushed to shift the burden of part of this care to the private sector and to minimise or remove government’s role in an attempt to undermine FDR’s New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Big Society initiative. They have frequently paid a high price. The failed attempt by Republican President George W. Bush to partially privatise Social Security contributed to his dismal second term. And Trump continues to criticise former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who advocated for a similar scheme.
While raising the alarm about dangers to senior social services might be a wise political strategy, especially in motivating older people who are more inclined to vote, it rarely addresses the program’s increasingly grave financial concerns.
According to the most recent Congressional Budget Office prediction, Social Security’s retiree trust fund might be depleted by 2032. Benefits could be lowered by at least 20% at that point, according to AWN’s Tami Luhby, due to fewer workers paying into the programme and an older population. Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, known as Part A, will only be able to completely pay scheduled benefits until 2028, according to its trustees’ most recent assessment.
Biden, who presented a new budget on Thursday that would help frame his likely reelection campaign pitch, has proposed raising taxes on people earning more than $400,000 per year to shore up the programme and expanding the variety of pharmaceuticals for which its managers can negotiate pricing. He claims that the move will keep Medicare solvent until 2050, with no benefit cutbacks. The president also intends to raise payroll taxes on anyone earning more than $400,000 in order to secure Social Security for the future. Nevertheless, there is a negligible possibility that the Republican-led House will agree to tax increases, thus Biden’s suggestion is more of a political ploy than a viable one.
Trump has no clear strategy.
While warning his fellow Republicans not to slash these programmes, it’s unclear how Trump will save them if he reclaims the presidency – and doing nothing isn’t an option. While some Republicans claim they do not want to eliminate services or raise taxes, it is unclear how they will square the circle.
Florida Senator Rick Scott has now removed Social Security and Medicare from his proposal to examine all spending programmes every five years. His earlier idea, which he unveiled while directing the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, enraged his Republican Senate colleagues, notably Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who saw it as a political liability. It hasn’t prevented Biden from asserting that it is representative of Republican policy.
Nevertheless, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has stated that cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare are “absolutely off the table” in negotiations with Biden over extending the government’s borrowing ceiling later this year. But that position has put him in a bind because it means that in order for the GOP to honor their pledge to slash spending, they will probably have to take aim at other social programs that could also prove unpopular with voters.
The United States is not the only country facing a crisis.
With his intention to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, French President Emmanuel Macron prompted countrywide demonstrations and rallies. Even China’s Communist Party is struggling as the world’s most dynamic rising economy faces severe consequences from a declining birthrate.
Back in the United States, whoever wins the White House and Congress elections in 2024, there appears to be no immediately recognisable option to protect these critical services on which millions of Americans rely. And the clock is ticking.
