Social Security was initially intended as a way to ensure that those who worked in their younger years would be able to retire peacefully and without financial stress in their later years.
It operates not by having a set fund that people pay into for themselves, like an individual retirement account, but rather by contributing to a collective fund that pays for those who currently receive Social Security.
Unfortunately, the system hasn’t stood the test of time as reports are seeing the cost of the program increasing and future retirees are expected to receive less than current beneficiaries, as CNBC reported in 2023.
As birth rates decline in the United States, fewer workers will be paying into the program while large numbers of retiring individuals will still expect benefits.
It’s estimated by 2034, those receiving benefits will only get 77 percent of what would be expected, a notable drop.
Because of the mathematically inevitable issues the program is facing, lawmakers are questioning what can be done to ensure that future recipients won’t receive less despite putting in just as much as previous generations.
On Monday, in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kerren on “Squawk Box,” former President Donald Trump discussed potential solutions to fix the ticking timebomb.
“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, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” Trump said.
He also saw solutions in not cutting Social Security but instead reducing inflation and increasing the strength of the economy.
Will the Social Security system survive?
The billionaire businessman-turned-politician argued that President Joe Biden would “end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak,” specifically alluding to the record-high inflation the country has seen under the Delaware politician’s presidency.
The former president said that if it weren’t or the COVID pandemic, his administration would have begun tackling the national debt issue and getting the budget to a more balanced position — allowing entitlement programs room to operate.
That wasn’t how Democrats presented it.
Following the interview, the Biden-Harris HQ account on the social media platform X — an arm of the Biden re-election campaign — published a clip that cut off the full answer from Trump, deceptively suggesting Trump talked only about cuts.
“Not on my watch,” the official Joe Biden account posted in response to the misinformation.
Not on my watch. https://t.co/RAHjjUlGDa
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 11, 2024
However, a responding social media post published by the Trump War Room, an official account run by the former president’s campaign, stated, “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”
If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste. https://t.co/q4Ng9U3iTP pic.twitter.com/yEZxuV2U5q
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 11, 2024
Nonetheless, Biden continued to mischaracterize what was said in the interview.
During a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday, he claimed that what Trump said was a sign that Republicans “want to put Social Security and Medicare back on the chopping block,” according to Politico.
After the president once again attempted to put words in his predecessor’s mouth, the Trump campaign issued an official response.
“President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term, and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary, stated, according to Politico.
“The only candidate who poses a threat to Social Security and Medicare is Joe Biden — whose mass invasion of millions of illegal aliens will, if Biden allows them to stay, cause Social Security and Medicare to collapse.”
Despite everything Biden and his administration have attempted to claim, Trump is not banging the drum for cutting Social Security if he’s re-elected in November.
Instead, the former president has noted the obvious— there are clear issues surrounding the programs — and is looking for solutions to fix those issues.
Biden is relying on sly tactics and intentionally misrepresenting Trump’s statements to create a false narrative that Trumps is coming for retirees’ benefits.
While it’s certainly shameful, it’s not surprising that such an unpopular president would have to rely on such measures to have any chance of winning re-election.
