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Former President Trump entertained the possibility of cutting Social Security and Medicare on Monday, prompting a rebuke from President Joe Biden.
During an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Trump was asked how he’d address the cost of the entitlement programs and their impact on the national debt. Economists in both parties have long warned both programs aren’t on a sustainable financial trajectory, and face long-term funding shortfalls that eventually lead to benefit cuts for retirees if Congress doesn’t step in.
“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 bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded “Tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
The Trump campaign later sought to clarify the comments, after they began to gain traction on social media. “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste,” the Trump War Room posted on X. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Trump has loudly pushed Republicans in the past to avoid touching Social Security and Medicare, and attacked some of his 2024 GOP rivals for advocating changes like raising the retirement age for younger Americans.
With his comments Monday, Democrats saw an opening to attack him on the issue and reiterate their own commitment to shield the programs from spending cuts. “Not on my watch,” Biden said in an X post. Last week, the president issued a blunt warning to Republicans in his State of the Union address: “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop you.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement that while the White House doesn’t comment on the 2024 election, “Cutting the Medicare and Social Security benefits that Americans have paid to earn the whole lives — only to make room for yet more unaffordable, trickle down tax giveaways to the super wealthy — is exactly backwards.”
The White House unveiled its 2025 budget on Monday, which usually doesn’t travel far in Congress. Within it, Biden commits to working with Congress to avoid Social Security benefit cuts and pushes for unspecified new taxes on the rich to extend the program’s lifespan.