We have been skeptical since last fall about President Trump’s promises not to touch Social Security and Medicare, partly because of the privatizers and cutters he appointed to high office. Now, according to an article in today’s Washington Post by reporter Dave Weigel, Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is actively agitating for the Trump administration to “work around” those promises:
“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers of our debt. I think people are starting to grab it.” – Mick Mulvaney on Hugh Hewitt radio program
Mulvaney claims that he is not really advocating that the President break his promises. Instead, the budget chief seems to be playing a semantic game by redefining what Trump really meant.
“Mulvaney… has said that any Republican reform would be consistent with Trump’s promise, by defining the act of ‘saving’ Social Security and Medicare as anything that allows them to meet obligations — even and especially if those obligations are reduced.” – Washington Post 3/6/17
That is a dubious bending of the President’s words on the campaign trail. Mulvaney is, in effect saying, we have to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to save them, which is patently wrong. The two programs could be kept solvent deep into the 21st century through modest and manageable measures that we have detailed many times since last Fall, with no benefit cuts. In fact, Senator Bernie Sanders’ new bill in Congress would increase benefits and extend Social Security’s solvency until 2078.
Mulvaney is being even more disingenuous, though, because candidate Trump explicitly promised not to cut either program. Trump told a post-election rally in Des Moines in December:
“You’ve been paying into Social Security and Medicare… We’re not gonna cut your Social Security and we’re not cutting your Medicare.” – President-elect Trump, December, 2016
It’s hard to see how Trump could have been any clearer, or how Mulvaney could claim the President could be convinced to cut Social Security and Medicare without violating his campaign promises. Yet, Mulvaney’s proposals on earned benefits programs would undeniably lead to benefit cuts. The Post points out that at his January confirmation hearing, he advocated raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, and supported means-testing to reduce Medicare spending, two unpopular measures with voters in the National Committee’s recent public poll.
Of course, Mulvaney is not the only Trump administration official gung ho to cut and privatize our retirement security programs. HHS Secretary Tom Price played a similar word game to Mulvaney’s last week, affirming that Medicare is a “guarantee” to seniors while implying that it has to be modified in order to uphold the guarantee.
We wrote last week about the potential bait-and-switch that the administration and Congressional leaders may use, by promising that current retirees won’t be affected by any changes, but that younger Americans might be by the time they are seniors.
None of this lends much comfort to current or future retirees – nor offers much reassurance that the President’s promises on Social Security and Medicare won’t be eroded, if not now, then in the near future.