With the 2024 general election switching into high gear, the Biden rapid-response team is hitting Donald Trump hard on a key issue: Social Security and Medicare. Trump appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday morning and told host Joe Kernen that “there is a lot” that can be done to cut social insurance programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
“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,” Trump said, adding, “Tremendous bad management of entitlements. There is tremendous amounts of things, and numbers of things, you can do.”
“Not on my watch,” Biden tweeted in response. The Biden-Harris team followed up, ready with a montage of all the times Trump has threatened the programs, including Monday morning.
The White House released an official statement from spokesman Andrew Bates saying Trump had it “exactly backwards” by proposing to cut “the Medicare and Social Security benefits that Americans have paid to earn their whole lives—only to make room for yet more unaffordable, trickle down tax giveaways to the super wealthy.”
“On Thursday [in the State of the Union address], this President was clear that, ‘If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop you … I’ll protect and strengthen Social Security and make the wealthy pay their fair share,’” Bates said.
Trump responded to that part of Biden’s speech Thursday night the only way he knows how: by lying. “Republicans have no plan to cut Social Security, a made up story by Crooked Joe!” he yelled on Truth Social. Only to turn around four days later to say he’d cut it.
Biden is putting his 2025 budget where his mouth is. The plan released Monday reiterates how he wants to expand and strengthen Social Security. “Social Security is the bedrock of financial security for American seniors and for millions of Americans with disabilities,” the plan reads. Not only will Biden not allow cuts to the program, he also supports plans to strengthen it by “asking the highest-income Americans to pay their fair share.”
The proposed budget also includes concrete plans to strengthen Medicare and make prescription drugs more affordable. Biden proposes bumping up the Medicare tax rate on the wealthy to extend the Medicare trust fund, adding more drugs to the list Medicare can negotiate prices for, capping cost-sharing on generic drugs for many chronic conditions to $2 per month, and providing three free mental/behavioral health visits for Medicare beneficiaries every year.
“Millions of Americans have been working their whole lives, paying into Social Security and Medicare with every working day, and want to know that they can count on these programs to be there when they need them,” the White House said, reiterating that Biden will reject all proposals to slash benefits.
Biden can thank Trump for giving him yet another opportunity to make that point.
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