Pence hits Trump in New Hampshire for ‘ignoring’ need for entitlement reforms

Former Vice President Pence on Tuesday laid out his economic vision for the country, swiping at former President Trump and other Republican presidential candidates for failing to tackle the issue of entitlement reform as he weighs a 2024 bid of his own.

Pence addressed a think tank in Concord, N.H., as part of a two-day swing through the Granite State, where he sounded very much like a presidential candidate as he walked attendees through the key pillars of his economic policy platform.

The former vice president focused in particular on entitlement reform, an area where he has differentiated himself from other Republican candidates by calling for “commonsense” changes to Social Security and Medicare to avoid insolvency in the coming years.

“Ignoring the problem is no longer an option,” Pence said in prepared remarks. “Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency. Sadly, so is President Trump’s. And the same can be said of any candidate unwilling to talk about the urgent need to save Social Security before it collapses.”

“They say entitlement reform is the ‘third rail’ of politics because if you dare to touch it, it might kill you,” Pence continued. “But the truth is the opposite. If we don’t grab the problem with both hands, it’s going to bankrupt our country. The danger lies not in action, but in apathy.”

President Biden, in his budget proposal released earlier this year, sought to fund Medicaid through an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations. Trump, who is a declared 2024 candidate, has urged Republicans to leave entitlement programs untouched in budget talks.

Pence’s entitlement reform remarks came as part of a broader speech at the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy about economic policy in which he laid out five ways he believed the next administration could boost the U.S. economy.

His first proposal was to make the tax cuts passed during the Trump administration permanent. Many of the changes enacted through the 2017 law are set to expire in 2025.

Pence also argued the next president should cut government spending and put the nation back on a path to a balanced federal budget. His calls for entitlement reform were part of that pillar.

The former vice president called for “drastically overhauling the federal permitting process” for energy, infrastructure and development projects, as well as reopening federal lands for possible drilling and energy production.

Pence added that the next president should stay out of the free market, an implicit jab at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and his ongoing battle with Disney in Florida. And Pence finally called for support for free trade deals with nations that share the values of the United States.

“We should do more business with countries that share our values, and less business with countries like China and Russia that want to undermine our way of life,” Pence said in prepared remarks.

Pence’s trip to New Hampshire came the day after a super PAC encouraging him to run for president officially launched, marking one of the clearest signs yet that the former vice president is likely to enter the GOP primary for 2024.

Pence has made several trips in recent months to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, which are the first three states on the GOP primary calendar. And he has sought to draw a contrast with Trump and DeSantis, who lead most Republican primary polls, on issues like Ukraine, entitlement reform and abortion.