Trump Campaign Says Democrats Twisted Trump’s Words on Cutting Social Security

Former president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Rome, Ga., on March 9, 2024. Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump said Monday that he believes there’s scope to save taxpayer dollars by cutting fraud and waste from entitlement programs, and then Democrats seized on his comments to claim that he backs slashing Social Security benefits, which the Trump campaign denied and accused Democrats of twisting his words.

The future of entitlement programs has become a key political talking point in the 2024 presidential campaign in light of projections from various government agencies, including the Social Security Administration, that Social Security’s main trust fund will run out of money by 2033 and then tax revenue will cover only 77 percent of Social Security benefits.

Some Republicans have proposed cutting entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, though President Trump has repeatedly expressed opposition. For instance, in January 2023, he issued a video message in which he cautioned Republicans that “under no circumstances” should they vote to cut “a single penny” from Medicare or Social Security.

Instead, the former president proposed slashing spending in other areas, for instance urging to “cut the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars going to corrupt foreign countries” and to “cut the mass releases of illegal aliens that are depleting our social safety net” and to “cut the billions being spent on climate extremism” and to “cut waste, fraud, and abuse everywhere we can find it,” to name a few suggestions.

President Trump again called for cutting wasteful and fraudulent spending in a March 11 interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” when asked whether he'd changed his outlook on how to address the looming funding shortfall in entitlement programs like Social Security.

“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—there’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do,” President Trump replied.

President Trump’s response suggests that his views on the matter have not changed, especially when read in context of his earlier remarks, namely that there are numerous areas of wasteful and fraudulent spending that could be cut—and that those funds could be used to provide money for Social Security.

However, Democrats seized on President Trump’s remarks to suggest he was in favor of cutting Social Security—a charge that President Biden has repeatedly leveled against Republicans in general.

The Biden campaign shared a video of a clip of President Trump’s interview, adding a caption that the Trump campaign would later say was an inaccurate depiction of the former president’s words: “Trump: There is a lot you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare.”

“Not on my watch,” President Biden replied to the post.

Also, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates issued a statement claiming that President Trump “proposed cutting Medicare and Social Security every year he was in office” and that President Biden “firmly” opposes any such cuts.

“Cutting the Medicare and Social Security benefits that Americans have paid to earn their whole lives—only to make room for yet more unaffordable, trickle down tax giveaways to the super wealthy—is exactly backwards,” he wrote.

President Biden has repeatedly vowed to push back against any GOP-led efforts to slash Social Security, most recently during his State of the Union address.

A number of conservative accounts on X have accused the Biden campaign of twisting President Trump’s words to score political points. Likewise, President Trump’s campaign account on X, the “Trump War Room,” issued a statement clarifying that, in the CNBC interview, “President Trump was talking about cutting waste” rather than Social Security benefits.

The claim that President Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare has long been a Democrat talking point, President Trump and his supporters have repeatedly denied this, insisting that he wants to find other areas in which to cut spending while, at the same time, seeking to generate more revenue for programs like Social Security by stimulating economic growth.

“Save Social Security,” President Trump said in his January 2023 video message. “Don’t destroy it.”

Future of Social Security

Besides projections from the Social Security Administration, estimates from the Treasury Department, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) all point to the danger that Social Security’s main trust fund will run out of money within a decade.

For instance, the CRFB estimated the Social Security trust fund, which consists of two smaller funds—the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund and the Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund—will run dry in 2033.

“Upon insolvency, the law mandates that the OASI trust fund can only spend in amounts equal to incoming trust fund revenue, which means that all 70 million retirees, dependents, and survivors—regardless of age, income, or need—will see their benefits cut by 23 percent,” the analysis states.

This means that, in 2033, annual benefits for the average newly retired dual-income couple would be cut by over $17,000.

“For a typical dual-income couple retiring in 2033, we estimate this would represent an immediate $17,400 cut in current dollar annual benefits and an immediate $13,100 cut for a typical single-income couple,” the analysis states.

Republicans have floated various ideas to address the solvency issues of Social Security and other programs.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who recently ended their 2024 presidential campaigns, have both said that Social Security should be reformed because the current arrangement is unsustainable.

Ms. Haley has called for raising the retirement age while cutting benefits, while Mr. DeSantis  pointed to the need to reform the system, expressing openness to changing eligibility requirements for Americans currently in their 30s and 40s.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who also dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, put forward a proposal for Social Security reform that would involve higher-earning Americans having their benefits cuts while exempting people aged 50 and older from any reforms.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said during a Senate Budget Committee hearing in the summer of 2023 that Congress should follow the example of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) during their time in the 1980s.

“The only way to reach a deal on Social Security is to follow the Reagan–O'Neill model. That means Congress and the president working in a bipartisan fashion and keeping a chain, a range of options on the table,” Mr. Grassley said, referring to the 1983 agreement that stabilized Social Security for decades.

The Reagan-O'Neill model was a combination of increasing payroll taxes and gradually raising the retirement age.