Both parties are returning to their roots on Social Security

Social Security’s future is on the ballot this November. 

Donald Trump’s recent comment to CNBC that “there is a lot you can do…in terms of cutting” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has appropriately gotten a lot of attention. It is far from the first time Trump has called for benefit cuts, but it is among the clearest. Along with planning to cut Social Security, Trump wants to extend his 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the uber-wealthy.

In stark contrast, President Biden’s recently released 2025 budget calls for expanding Social Security while requiring those same uber-wealthy to pay their fair share. Biden vows to veto any and all cuts. As he said in the State of the Union, “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop them!” 

Importantly, congressional Democrats have several plans that implement Biden’s ideas. Those plans include the Social Security 2100 Act (sponsored by Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) and co-sponsored by more than 180 House Democrats) and the Social Security Expansion Act (sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)). 

The details of the plans differ, but the basics are the same. They bring in enough revenue from the wealthy to ensure that Social Security can not only pay all current benefits for the foreseeable future, but also pay expanded benefits. Those expanded benefits include across-the-board benefit increases, as well as targeted increases for the most disadvantaged groups, including women and people of color. Indeed, Biden’s budget goes even further, proposing paid family and medical leave. 

That is the Democratic Party’s vision for Social Security’s future. It is the same vision that inspired the Democrats who enacted Social Security in 1935. President Franklin Roosevelt and his colleagues believed that paid medical leave would be added over time, together with larger benefits, universal health insurance, short-term disability benefits and more.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party have a very different vision and plan. While massively exploding the deficit with tax handouts to their wealthy donors, Republicans insist that Social Security is unaffordable — despite the fact that, as even Ronald Reagan acknowledged, Social Security doesn’t contribute a single penny to the deficit.

Congressional Republicans are trying to force a so-called “fiscal commission,” which they included in their own 2025 budget, into must-pass government funding legislation. This commission is designed to fast-track cuts to Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors. 

Instructively, in 2011, Trump told Sean Hannity that Republicans “are going to lose elections” if they “fall into the Democratic trap” of advocating cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without bipartisan cover. Consistent with that, Republicans want to use an opaque process because they know that Social Security cuts are extremely unpopular, including with their own voters. They want to go behind closed doors with Democrats and emerge with cuts, so that voters won’t know whom to blame.

Fortunately, Trump failed to follow his own advice. His recent comments on CNBC have exposed the truth. They are not a one-off: When Trump was president, every single one of his budgets proposed cuts to Social Security. Prior to his presidency, he called for raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security, and slandered the program as a Ponzi scheme. 

Despite that, many in the media have taken Trump’s pledges to not cut Social Security and Medicare at face value. Rarely, if ever, is he pressed to answer what additional revenue he proposes if he, like Biden, rejects all cuts.

It’s time for that to change.

Both parties are returning to their roots on Social Security. Republicans fought hard against the creation of Social Security. Their 1936 presidential nominee Alf Landon called it a “cruel hoax.” Democrats created Social Security and regularly expanded it for decades. Recently, the distinction between the parties blurred, as neoliberals open to Social Security cuts gained power in the Democratic Party. But no longer. 

Trump and Republicans running for Congress want to cut Social Security and give tax breaks to the wealthy. Biden and Democrats running for Congress want to protect and expand Social Security, paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to contribute their fair share.

President Biden’s budget shows that he is the heir to Franklin D. Roosevelt, while Trump’s CNBC comments show that he is the heir to Alf Landon. Americans should vote accordingly this November.

Nancy Altman is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition.