But they're still hellbent on fucking us out of it. So don't fall for any of the spin words they're always floating.
- "Revamping"
- "Revisiting"
- "Ensuring The Solvency"
- blah blah blah.
That's all just the basic Frank Luntz focus group bullshit buzzword factory hard at work.
Privatization is the goal - because it's always the goal. They'll tear down our institutions, point innocently at the wreckage, and then puff out their chests like they're going to ride in and save us all from our foolishness, when the foolishness we should be concerned about is our gullibility - our willingness to go on swallowing all the shit they float down to us.
But before we let ourselves think maybe they've changed, and that they intend to back off their fuckery, here they come again. Only this time, they're trying to bribe Seniors into a false sense of security, &/or by playing on the hard-heartedness they've been cultivating in people for decades (I've got mine - it's all good - everybody else should work for theirs or just fuck off and die).
At the same time, it would seem they're counting on the apathy of younger voters who don't see themselves very clearly in the future (so they don't think much about that at all), and who may well believe pretty strongly that nothing good's going to happen anyway, so why bother?
Republicans may be be laboring under a pretty gross misperception though. People who'll be eligible to vote in November 2024, have been going to school with - and making friends with, and getting close with - lots of the people currently being abused, and 'othered', and straight-up shat-upon and bullied by a GOP that can't bring itself to be anything but a collection of rubes, meatheads, and misanthropes.
First, maybe this is finally the election cycle that youngsters get the message, get up off their asses, and go vote.
Second, probably more than half of those new(ish) voters are women, and something like 65% of those are still hoppin' mad about losing on Roe v Wade, which feeds a further outrage at the prospect of being forced backwards into a culture that assumes them to be subjects instead of citizens.
So anyway...
Trump’s GOP rivals open door to cutting Social Security for younger people
Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley propose curbing spending on the program without affecting seniors
Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party’s leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program.
In comments on Sunday as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Social Security will need to be revamped — but not for people who are near or in retirement.
Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch either Social Security or Medicare — a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party’s views — and has more recently hammered DeSantis for wanting to cut the program.
“When people say that we’re gonna somehow cut seniors, that is totally not true,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “Talking about making changes for people in their thirties and their forties so the program’s viable — that’s a much different thing, and something I think there’s going to need to be discussion on.”
On Monday, Pence told Fox Business: “I’m glad to see another candidate in this primary has been willing to step up and talk about that.”
The positions the three Trump rivals are taking suggest that even the fiscally conservative candidates in the GOP presidential primary are reluctant to endorse cutting Social Security for seniors, highlighting just how much the party has shifted on the issue. Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the party’s 2012 vice-presidential candidate, had led the party in championing budget blueprints that would have entailed significant cuts to both Social Security and Medicare.
As the Republican Party becomes increasingly reliant on older voters for support and as Trump continues to exert heavy influence over the party’s beliefs, GOP policymakers have followed the former president’s lead in steering clear of proposals to cut the program, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ruling that out in debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year with the White House.
But concentrating potential cuts on the young, as the Trump challengers have proposed, has its downsides as well. The candidates’ posture risks alienating young voters that have already become increasingly alienated from the Republican Party. And cutting benefits for younger people leaves the bulk of the problem unresolved, experts say, given that the Social Security funding crisis is projected to arrive decades before millennials receive their first checks.
“It clearly would not address the shortfall, or the short- to medium-term problem we’re going to have in 10 years or less,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Economists of both parties agree that Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, face funding crises if Congress does not act to shore up their finances somehow, either by reducing benefits or raising taxes. If no reforms are enacted, Social Security benefits for an estimated 60 million people will be cut by 20 percent starting in 2033, according to according to the most recent report of the Boards of Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Medicare also faces an automatic benefit cuts as soon as 2031, the report says.
President Biden has proposed increasing taxes on the rich and businesses to prevent Medicare from running out of funds. But the latest White House budget does not propose a solution for extending Social Security. Numerous congressional Democrats have called for trillions in new taxes to avoid the Social Security shortfall, as well.
Policy experts have long said it will likely take a mixture of reduced spending and higher taxes to address the looming funding shortage facing Social Security and Medicare. Social Security’s old age and survivors insurance trust fund is expected to only be able to pay 77 percent of benefits in 2033, which would likely lead to automatic reductions in payments. People in their forties are still more than two decades away from receiving Social Security benefits.
The comments from DeSantis and Pence suggest that some Republicans have “not updated their talking points from the 1990s,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. Thirty years ago, Riedl said, it would have been possible to argue for resolving the funding shortfall only by limiting benefits for future recipients. But given that the enormous baby boomer generation is now at retirement age, exempting them from cuts would still leave the program in crisis.
“I get the politics of not wanting to lead with, ‘We will cut seniors,’” Riedl said. “But it might be better to say nothing than to offer an unpopular approach that doesn’t even avoid a debt crisis because it would be implemented far too late.”
DeSantis’s message will likely soon be tested. Trump has released video messages tying DeSantis to House Republicans who wanted to cut Social Security and for pushing to raise the retirement age when the Florida governor served in Congress, although Trump has also expressed support in the past for raising the retirement age.
“Donald Trump ruled Social Security and other benefits out of bounds politically” for Republican politicians, said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “But there are still Republicans, including some leading Republicans, who understand we wont make serious progress on our fiscal problems until everything’s on the table. They’re trying to open that discussion, without it immediately being shut down.”
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