The public has started waking up to the vast scope of Social Security’s unfunded liabilities, some politicians are starting to speak out about how the program can be saved and its cost reigned in before it’s too late. Among those who spoke out about the issue was former President Donald Trump, who said that the mismanagement of the program needs to come to an end and fraud regarding it stopped so that the cost can be pushed down. He also recently vowed that he would not cut the program, come what may.
Trump, speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about Social Security, said, “So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”
Trump then spoke to Breitbart News in more depth, promising to avoid making cuts to the program. He said, “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare.” Continuing, he added that cuts will need to be made to the budget but that those cuts will come from elsewhere. In his words: “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
Continuing, he insisted that there are many other areas of the budget that can and should be cut instead of Social Security, so he will focus on making those cuts. He said, “There’s so many things we can do.” He continued, “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
Trump’s strong pledge on the matter comes after critics used his CNBC remarks to attack him on the Social Security issue. “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg, for instance, said, “Yeah, we could put you in jail for all your entitlements.” She then snapped, to applause from the studio, “Social Security is not an entitlement. We paid for that!”
Similarly, President Joe Biden, during a speech in New Hampshire, said, “If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them.” He added, “Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicare to give us more tax cuts for the wealthy.”
Further, Biden twisted Trump’s words to accuse him of having indicated an inclination toward cutting Medicare and Social Security, saying, “Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table again.”
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Trump and his campaign insist that he was only referring to cutting waste in the program, not cutting benefits to seniors. His campaign said, “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”
Watch Trump’s CNBC comments here: