“The biggest drivers of runaway spending are the New Deal, the Great Society programs, Social Security, and Medicare that Americans depend on every day,” Pence said in his inaugural address.
If left unaddressed, he argued, the program’s burden would “shatter the future” of the next generation.
His stance is in direct conflict with former President Donald Trump, who has flatly rejected cuts to the two programs and criticized DeSantis over his past support for restructuring proposals. Both Trump and President Joe Biden have attacked DeSantis from the same angle.
Mr. DeSantis has since reversed his stance, declaring in recent months that Republicans are “not going to interfere with Social Security.” And although his presidential campaign has spent little time on the issue, pro-Trump pollsters believe that DeSantis’ record on entitlement cuts is his weakest position with voters in battleground states. Perhaps that’s not surprising given what’s been reported.
Pence said Biden’s “policies are bankrupt,” but added, “Republicans, you need to know that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is the same. Both of them have talked about this issue. , they refuse to even tell the American people.” ”
The gulf between presidential front-runners and traditionally conservative figures like Trump’s former ally Pence, who has a long shot to win the White House, was once central to the Republican Party’s fiscal responsibility message. reflects a broader retreat from the position.
Some experts trace that turning point to Trump’s political rise.
“Republicans had a lot of positions that were similar to those of conservative economists: lower taxes, fewer rights, more trade,” said Stephen Telles, a political science professor and senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. talk. In an interview at the Niskanen Center. “Mr. Trump was not involved in that framework at all.”
Trump realized that “you can just tell people what they want to hear, and no one in the Republican Party has really tried that,” Telles said.
Trump himself once advocated raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, but abandoned the idea by the time he became a presidential candidate in 2015.
Former U.S. President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles during the Team Trump Volunteer Leadership Training at the Grimes Community Center on June 1, 2023 in Grimes, Iowa.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
“We’re going to save money, not increase it,” Trump said at the time. “I don’t plan on getting older, so it’s okay.”
If Mr. Trump was making a political calculation, it wasn’t difficult.
Tens of millions of seniors in the United States rely on Social Security and Medicare benefits, and that number is growing as the population ages. Meanwhile, the percentage of registered voters aged 50 and older has increased rapidly in recent decades. Older voters tend to turn out at a higher rate than younger groups, and they also tend to lean heavily toward Republicans.
Across political lines, a majority of American adults consistently say they oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits. They also oppose several ideas proposed to reform the program, including raising the eligibility age, reducing Social Security benefits and increasing Medicare premiums.
But both programs are expected to dry up in the coming years as the number of seniors eligible for benefits grows, overshadowed by a shrinking workforce that funds them through payroll taxes. .
Excess reserves across the Social Security administration are currently scheduled to be depleted beginning in 2034, and Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is not expected to be able to fully pay benefits by 2031.
Some Republicans, including a few running for president, continue to warn of an impending bankruptcy crisis and advocate entitlement reform.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who launched her campaign in February, is pushing for changes that affect younger generations, including raising the retirement age and limiting benefits for the wealthy. Meanwhile, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott vowed that if elected president, he would “cut costs and make sure we don’t cut Medicare or Social Security benefits.”
But many others, including party leaders, have railed against accusations that Republicans are trying to water down Social Security and Medicare.
Biden drew loud boos from Republicans in his recent State of the Union address when he accused some in the party of trying to eliminate the two programs. This is an apparent reference to a plan submitted last year by Sen. Rick Scott, then the Republican Senate campaign chairman, which included “all federal laws to be repealed in five years. “If it’s worth keeping, Congress should keep it,” it read. I can cross again. ”
However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rejected Scott’s plan, saying a proposal to eliminate the program “is not on the agenda of the Republican Senate majority.”
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spoke with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Elyse Stefanik (R-La.) after approving the debt ceiling increase deal negotiated with the House of Representatives. , New York) at a press conference. On May 31, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., the White House resolves the conflict and averts historic default.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had redlined the program as part of the latest political fight over the debt ceiling.
Critics, including the White House, say vague Republican proposals to “strengthen” entitlements would actually lead to harmful cuts. In a memo Wednesday, Biden press secretary Andrew Bates pointed to McCarthy’s recent comments, accusing Republicans of “directly targeting” the program. phone Forces a congressional committee to consider cuts across government, including mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Meanwhile, Trump, who remains a key figure in the Republican Party, warned Republican lawmakers not to “cut a penny from Medicare or Social Security” as part of the fight to raise the debt ceiling.
Mainstream Republican views on rights have once again become clear. Medicare reform was a top priority in the 2011 budget, sponsored by then-House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The plan would move toward privatizing the program by giving seniors subsidies to buy private insurance.
The following year, Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate against then-President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. In 2015, Ryan was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
DeSantis spoke in favor of Ryan’s ideas when he ran for Congress in 2012.
“What I think we need to do, especially for people of my generation, is start rebuilding the programs in a fiscally sustainable way, both in Social Security and Medicare,” DeSantis said. He said this in an interview in 2012.
“I’m open to proposals like those proposed by Paul Ryan and others to bring in market forces, give more consumer choice, and not have a system that basically goes bankrupt. There will be new people coming in,” DeSantis said.
“Social Security people, I would do the same,” he added.
When Mr. DeSantis entered Congress, he voted in favor of a nonbinding conservative budget for rights reform.
But as he prepares to run for the White House, DeSantis has taken a different stance.
Fireside chat with Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis as part of the “Our Great American Comeback” campaign event in Lexington, South Carolina on June 2, 2023.
Peter Zai | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
“The number of seniors has increased. [in Florida] More than anyone else in terms of percentage. You know, as Republicans, we’re not going to interfere with Social Security,” DeSantis said on Fox News in March in response to Biden’s assertion that Republicans supported cuts.
“I think it’s pretty clear,” DeSantis added, shifting the discussion away from the rights and arguing that discretionary spending — the money that Congress must vote on each year to determine appropriate spending — is causing inflation.
As a presidential candidate, DeSantis vowed to curb wasteful government spending. But his campaign website makes no mention of Social Security and Medicare, which account for nearly 8% of GDP in 2022, and he hasn’t brought up the issue indiscriminately.
DeSantis announced his campaign in a long, free-form conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk that covered a wide range of social issues and other policy topics, but did not mention rights. Ta.
In a subsequent Fox interview, DeSantis avoided directly discussing Medicare and Social Security, even though he was asked twice for his views on how to approach those programs.
Asked on Fox if the budget deficit could be resolved without addressing entitlements, DeSantis said, “Of course, overspending is causing inflation,” before asking the Federal Reserve to I turned to talk.
Asked if he believed it was possible to balance the budget without dipping into mandatory spending, DeSantis said, “Well, that’s true. So, at the end of the day, mathematically, we have more “And that’s a fact.” A combination of “both discretionary and mandatory spending.”
The DeSantis campaign pointed to three other recent incidents to CNBC. interview It became a hot topic. Asked about the nation’s finances in an interview with Liberal John Stossel, DeSantis emphasized increasing discretionary spending over mandatory spending.
In an interview with Newsmax, DeSantis was asked to respond to criticism from allies of President Trump about his record on entitlement reform.
“Those are Democratic attacks,” DeSantis said. “I don’t think anyone would really buy something like that.”