Every election season, we Democrats vow to protect Social Security and Medicare and point out how Republicans would endanger the programs if given the chance. Republicans reliably feign indignation at the charge, despite their repeated plans to make massive cuts to Social Security and drive up the deficit. Well, no one should ever again fall for Republicans’ faux indignation. Within months of consolidating control of the White House and Congress, Republicans went to work destabilizing Social Security, Medicare and the entire American health care system. Creepy billionaires love what they’ve done, but the public hates it, so Republicans hide their mischief.
Let’s look first at Social Security, which for 90 years has been the bedrock of economic fairness and retirement security for Americans. In 2022, Social Security lifted 28.9 million Americans out of poverty. Nearly half of all seniors live in households that receive at least 50% of their family income from Social Security benefits. These are earned benefits; retirees have paid into the system over a lifetime of work. But the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress want to hand off the data and the funds to private equity and Big Tech.
When President Trump took office, he sent Elon Musk and DOGE into the Social Security Administration, ostensibly to “eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.” It turns out DOGE was the waste, fraud and abuse. Musk falsely called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and said that alleged fraud in entitlement programs is “the big one to eliminate,” despite the fact that Social Security fraud is extremely rare. His DOGE boys began to gum up the operations of the Social Security Administration. The Trump administration drove out staff, eliminated thousands of positions at the agency, tried to close regional offices, fouled up the agency’s website and added burdensome new requirements for seniors to access services.
One investigation found that callers’ wait times soared to nearly an hour and 45 minutes, sometimes exceeding three hours. If they can foul up operations enough, and create an “interruption of benefits,” they can send in their private equity and tech bros to “save” the system they broke; in other words, privatization by fake emergency.
Last month, when President Trump and congressional Republicans jammed through their Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill, it included tax cuts that make the financial picture for Social Security more challenging. It gets worse from there: Treasury Secretary Bessent, who couldn’t help himself, slipped and called the investment accounts created by the law a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.” Republicans are obsessed with handing seniors’ money and data off to private equity — a recipe for disaster.
On to Medicare: Medicare is facing its own problems because of Trump’s Beautiful-for-Billionaires Bill. We all know that the new law explodes our debt and deficits to give tax breaks for the ultra-rich and giant corporations, while slashing Medicaid and eliminating programs to feed hungry families. We see those Medicaid cuts coming at our hospitals and nursing homes. But there’s also a sneak attack on Medicare hiding in their law.
Here’s how that works: An existing law called “sequestration” makes mandatory cuts when new laws explode the debt past a certain point. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the massive, $4 trillion debt explosion from the Beautiful-for-Billionaires Law will trigger sequestration starting next year, resulting in $536 billion in cuts to Medicare over nine years. Republicans aren’t talking about that — they don’t want you to know. The Medicare cuts can be undone if Congress passes a law to do that; Republicans chose not to do that in their Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill, setting up impending Medicare cuts that would be devastating.
Republicans shouldn’t threaten Social Security payment failures or plan sneaky automatic Medicare cuts. Here’s how you fix Social Security and Medicare and protect seniors’ benefits forever: You get the wealthy to pay their fair share into the system. I introduced legislation to shore up the finances of Social Security and Medicare indefinitely, as far as the actuarial eye can see. My bill solves a lot of big problems with a simple fix — no longer letting the wealthiest get out of paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on most of their income.
Working- and middle-class Americans pay into Social Security and Medicare their entire working life so they can enjoy a dignified retirement, but they end up paying a much larger share of their income in the payroll taxes that fund Social Security than billionaires, because the tax code is rigged in favor of the rich. Someone earning a $10 million annual salary only has to contribute Social Security taxes on $176,100 of what they make. If they are a hedge fund manager making $10 million on investments alone, they’ll pay nothing at all into the system. Meanwhile, a teacher or firefighter has to pay that tax on all of their income. My Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act would address this fundamental unfairness, requiring taxpayers with over $400,000 in income to contribute a fairer share; as I said, protecting the solvency of Social Security and Medicare for as far as the actuarial eye can see.
If we want to get serious about protecting Social Security and Medicare, a good first step is reversing the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ budget-busting giveaways for their billionaire donors. I will continue doing everything in my power to protect and expand Social Security benefits for hardworking middle-class families so they can enjoy the dignified retirement they have earned.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
