President Joe Biden headed to Tampa, Florida, on Feb. 9, telling seniors that his Democrats are the true guardians of Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, he also falsely espoused the same message he touted during his State of the Union address: Republicans want to cut these entitlement programs. "Well, let me say this: If that's your dream, I'm your nightmare," he said. So, does the GOP wish to put these massive programs on the chopping block? Hardly.
Feeling Insecure About Social Security
Every couple of years, Republicans are accused of wanting to eliminate Social Security because the party supposedly loathes the vote-rich senior demographic. The most egregious example occurred in 2012 when then-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was likened to someone tossing an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff. Since then, a considerable portion of the electorate routinely believes that the GOP plans to take a chainsaw to the program when this has not been the case.
The last time anything significant changed for Social Security was in 1983 when Congress altered the law to authorize the taxation of monthly benefits. The Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate voted yes on a series of amendments to the Social Security Act, which included a levy on payments. (One of the yea votes was Joe Biden). Then-President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law, and this was the last time lawmakers in the nation's capital touched the plan.
Over the years, there have been discussions, mainly on the right, about reforming the program since it is on the brink of financial calamity. Last summer, the Republican Study Committee released a budget plan to gradually raise the retirement eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to ensure they remained fiscally viable for the foreseeable future. However, no official proposal included eradicating these federal plans.
But the White House and Democratic allies in the mainstream media are pointing to two statements that had been made by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rick Scott (R-FL). First, Lee ostensibly argued, when he was a candidate more than a decade ago, that the federal government should "phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots, and get rid of it." However, Lee wasn't proposing a sudden elimination of the program:
"We have to hold harmless those who are currently beneficiaries. Those who are retired and are currently receiving those benefits, their benefits have to be untouched, unchanged, unphased. The next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years also probably have to be held harmless."
In July 2011, Sen. Lee called upon then-President Barack Obama to justify withholding Social Security benefits rather than searching for budget alternatives. The senator noted that the US government was receiving about $200 billion per month in tax revenue, which would be "more than enough tax revenue" to cover these benefits. "That begs the question, why are Social Security beneficiaries the first to be threatened?" Lee tweeted at the time. "Why is it their checks that the President is threatening to withhold first? There is no explanation to this that he's offered, and I hereby demand one." Lee also posed the question, "Are there no programs in the Energy Department, or Interior, or at HUD which we could suspend in order to ensure that our seniors receive the income they are expecting?"
In 2022, Scott released a proposal to make "all federal legislation sunset in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again." Put simply, many things would need to be reauthorized by Congress every year. And yet, this was apparently good enough for the left to prove that the GOP is planning on gutting Social Security. The problem? The senator's proposal never references a phase-out of Social Security or Medicare. Ironically, this is the same type of legislation presented by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1975 that required "every program to be looked at freshly at least once every four years. The examination is not just of the increased cost of the program, but of the worthiness of the entire program." This included everything from the defense budget to entitlement programs.
Lastly, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) confirmed in a Jan. 29 appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation” that any cuts to these two programs are "off the table."
Over the years, it has been Biden who has supported efforts to adopt changes to Social Security. In 1996, he advocated cutting the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) by one percentage point. In 2007, when he ran for president, he argued that the retirement age and COLA had to "be on the table." As vice president, Biden proposed changing inflation calculations that would reduce the mean SS benefit by roughly 4.5% over four decades.
Going, Going, Gone
At this point, it is improbable that either the Democrats or the Republicans will make changes to Social Security or Medicare. It is political suicide. That said, the two parties will eventually be forced to grapple with these programs since they are on the cusp of insolvency. Whether it is raising the full retirement age past 67 or adopting means-testing, something will have to be done to ensure these sacred cows remain intact for generations to come.
