“First, it’s not as if there is some secret knowledge to be uncovered by the DOGE when it comes to fixing the rampant inefficiencies of the federal government. Those Medicare and Medicaid overpayments are documented annually, for example. The Government Accountability Office and various inspectors general file regular reports. The Congressional Budget Office maintains a list of things that could be cut to reduce the deficit. Various members of Congress—most prominently, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.)—periodically publish lists of silly, wasteful, or dubious government spending.
What’s lacking, in short, is not ideas but the political will to act on them.
The amount of political will is going to matter, because that is very relevant to the second point: Unless Trump is willing to set aside his promise not to touch America’s entitlement programs, the DOGE will be unable to follow through on its mandate.
Again, look at those improper payments made by Medicare and Medicaid. The $101.4 billion of improper payments the two entitlements made in 2023 accounted for 40 percent of all improper payments across the entire government that year, according to the GAO. That same GAO report suggested a simple change in how Medicaid bills some of its services that, if implemented, could save $141 billion over 10 years.”
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“The same problem pops up when you start looking at other big swings that the DOGE could take. Seven of the top nine suggestions made by the Congressional Budget Office’s annual report on “options for reducing the deficit” involve changing elements of America’s three federal entitlement programs. Capping Medicaid spending, increasing premiums for Medicare Part B, or reconfiguring how Social Security benefits are paid to wealthier Americans each could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. None will be possible as long as entitlement reform is off the table.
All of this is a function of the federal government’s fiscal reality: Entitlements are the biggest and fastest-growing segment of the budget. This year, so-called “mandatory spending”—primarily Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with a few other government-funded health care programs—will cost nearly $4 trillion, while all discretionary spending will total less than $1.8 trillion.
Musk has promised $2 trillion in spending cuts, but he could propose eliminating all discretionary spending—good luck zeroing out the Pentagon—and would still fall short of that goal. It is impossible to be serious about fiscal reform while promising not to touch the entitlement programs.”
“””Trump also recently proposed cutting taxes on Social Security payments. That might sound good because people will net more money when they receive their benefits. But the reality is more complicated. The poorest households wouldn’t see any change under that plan because Social Security benefits for those making below $32,000 are already untaxed, while the richest recipients would be more likely to see a tax cut.”
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“There’s no way around it: Lawmakers have to raise taxes on many families, including those who aren’t millionaires. Right now, any income that someone makes above $168,000 is not taxed for Social Security. That means that higher earners pay a smaller share of their income toward funding Social Security than lower- and middle-income earners.”
“To get the debt under control, AAF points out that lawmakers cannot simply focus on the discretionary part of the federal budget—which accounts for less than 30 percent of all federal spending. Meanwhile, so-called “mandatory spending” accounts for more than 60 percent (the rest is interest payments on the debt).
Most of the mandatory spending category is made up of Social Security and Medicare, but several other programs also run on autopilot, including food stamps, federal worker retirement benefits, Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies, and veterans’ benefits.
“Mandatory spending is the biggest driver of the national debt because there is no restriction on the unchecked growth of these programs,” argues AAF’s debt report.
Among the proposals to bring mandatory spending under control, the group argues for means-testing future Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for individuals making more than $1 million annually, stopping President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plans, ending Obamacare’s insurance subsidies for wealthy Americans, and the formation of a congressional commission to propose spending cuts.
The group also calls for ending so-called “tax expenditures,” which are forms of spending hidden in the tax code—for example, corporate green energy subsidies delivered in the form of renewable tax credits.
The new document picks up where Pence left off in his failed Republican primary campaign last year. On the campaign trail, Pence talked up the importance of sane fiscal policy and condemned his former boss—Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—for ignoring the threat posed by runaway borrowing and unsustainable entitlement programs.
Of course, Pence’s campaign never got off the ground in any meaningful sense. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had a little more success, but there’s clearly not much of a constituency for serious talk about the debt.”
“there is only a decade until Social Security hits a brick wall that will trigger automatic cuts to benefits (and even less time until parts of Medicare go over a cliff). Rather than facing that problem and proposing solutions, however, the Republican Party’s newly adopted platform embraces the plan that the old GOP criticized eight years ago: Do nothing and wait for the consequences to arrive.
In the new platform.. the Republican Party says it will “not cut one penny” from Social Security or Medicare and will also oppose efforts to raise the retirement age.”
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“Choosing to do nothing is still a choice. And we know exactly where the path that both Biden and Donald Trump have picked will end. When Social Security hits insolvency in the early 2030s, beneficiaries will see an automatic cut to their monthly checks. Right now, the trustees that run the program estimate that the cut will be 21 percent, with further cuts likely in future years if nothing changes. This is the outcome that the Republican Party’s new platform promises to deliver.
Indeed, at last month’s debate Trump and Biden both tried to blame the other for trying to change Social Security, while neither presented a workable plan to keep the program solvent or phase it out.”
“The solution to the national debt lies in reevaluating and cutting back on unnecessary and wasteful programs, reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and implementing a more efficient tax system that encourages economic growth.
But none of this can even begin to happen until politicians perceive a demand for it from the American people. Rising debt reduces investment and can slow economic growth, while increasing worries about inflation and the strength of the U.S. dollar. It reduces confidence in the social safety net and increases the risk of a fiscal crisis. Perhaps when these problems manifest, the voters will demand that politicians take the issue seriously. But by then, it may well be too late for the economic stability and growth we have taken for granted.”
“Contrary to what Trump and Biden imply, it is impossible to “protect” Social Security and Medicare by doing nothing. Inaction will guarantee automatic benefit cuts in less than a decade.
In 2033, according to the latest projections, Social Security’s trust fund “will become depleted,” and “continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits.” Two years before then, Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund “will be sufficient to pay 89 percent of total scheduled benefits.””
“Under current law, the payroll tax that funds Social Security is capped so that, for this year, only the first $168,600 in earnings are subject to it.
Raising that cap—or eliminating it—is frequently discussed as one possible solution to Social Security’s approaching insolvency. That seems to be the idea that Biden was gesturing towards in his speech.
On its face, this isn’t necessarily the worst idea. The cap is completely arbitrary, so there’s no principled reason why all earnings shouldn’t be treated equally. And there’s no doubt that raising the cap would generate more revenue to help keep Social Security afloat. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that applying payroll taxes to higher income levels could raise $1 trillion in revenues over a 10-year period (though the amount of revenue would depend on how the cap was altered, and whether benefits increased as well).”
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“raising or eliminating the payroll tax gap doesn’t come close to solving the long-term Social Security shortfall. It might generate $1 trillion over 10 years, which is a lot of money, but it doesn’t come close to the $2.8 trillion deficit the program is expected to run over the next decade.
“Eliminating the tax cap would either raise benefits as well (reducing the proposals’ savings), or—if the accompanying benefits are canceled—turn Social Security into a true welfare program by delinking contributions and benefits,” writes Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former Senate budget staffer, in a recent piece debunking some common myths about Social Security reform. “Moreover, eliminating the cap would not bring permanent solvency or avert the need for benefit changes….The system would return to deficits by 2029. Lawmakers would still need to reform benefit levels and the eligibility age.””
“During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, the targeted assassination of terrorists’ family members, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and enormous corporate tax cuts.
And voters considered him the most “moderate” Republican candidate in more than four decades.
To the extent this perception had any basis in reality, it reflected Trump’s genuine moderation on one highly salient issue: Unlike many of his GOP predecessors, the mogul emphatically opposed any cuts to Medicare and Social Security. This likely made it a bit easier for ideologically conflicted older Rust Belt voters to pull the lever for a Republican.
As president, Trump never pursued large cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits and implored his party to avoid them during the debt ceiling fight last year.
Since the days of FDR, Democrats have profited from their reputation as the more stalwart guardians of entitlement benefits. Trump’s triangulation threatens to nullify that critical source of partisan advantage. President Joe Biden has therefore sought to portray Trump’s avowed support for Social Security and Medicare as fraudulent. And on Monday, the presumptive GOP nominee bolstered the president’s case.
In an interview with CNBC, Trump said that he was open to cutting entitlement spending. Then, his campaign said that he wasn’t.
Trump’s reflections on public policy tend to bear only a loose resemblance to coherent thoughts. And his remarks about entitlements on CNBC Monday were no exception. In that exchange, anchor Joe Kernen told Trump that “something has to be done” about entitlement costs, then asked if the former president had changed his mind about cutting “Social Security, Medicare, [and] Medicaid” in light of the rising national debt.
Trump replied:
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.
Biden pounced on Trump’s words, posting a clip of the Republican’s answer and vowing that no cuts to entitlements would be allowed “on my watch.” The Trump campaign replied, “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”
This rebuttal is disingenuous. Trump plainly stated that there was a lot that the government could do “in terms of cutting” entitlements and “also” in terms of combating “theft and bad management of entitlements.” What precisely the former president is referring to when he alleges that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are rife with theft, bad management, and waste is unclear. And neither he nor his campaign has produced any actual evidence of such improprieties.
This said, it’s also true that, by the end of his answer, Trump was evincing disagreement with Kernen’s statement that entitlements needed to be cut. So, one could reasonably argue that, as with so many of Trump’s statements, his musings on entitlement reform were too suffused with internal contradictions and baseless demagogy to have any concrete meaning.
Yet Trump’s gaffe is not the only reason for voters to fear that a Republican victory in November could lead to leaner Social Security benefits.
For one thing, Trump spent his entire presidency trying to cut Medicaid, an entitlement program that provides not only health insurance for low-income Americans, but also long-term care for older voters. And he has tried to cut Social Security benefits for disabled and low-income people.
For another, the GOP’s avowed fiscal commitments cannot be reconciled with preserving Medicare and Social Security in their present forms. Congressional Republicans are committed to enacting trillions of dollars worth of new tax cuts, perennially increasing defense spending, and balancing the federal budget. There is no politically tenable way to do this without cutting Social Security or Medicare.”