{"id":392,"date":"2026-06-13T11:08:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=392"},"modified":"2026-06-13T11:08:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:08:55","slug":"gop-has-a-new-plan-to-kill-off-medicare-and-social-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=392","title":{"rendered":"GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One of the least remarked-upon chapters in the Republicans\u2019 ghastly Project 2025 documentdealt with<\/span>their plan to <\/span>cut Social Security and Medicare, ostensibly to fix the impending trust fund shortfall and eliminate the national deficitall at once.<\/span>The reason hardly anyone talked about it is that if there\u2019s one thingwe know about Republicans,\u00a0<\/span>from the so-called moderates to the most extreme MAGA true\u00a0believers,\u00a0<\/span>it\u2019s that they want to do away with those commie pinko programs once and for all.<\/p>\n

Read more How \u201cfreeze the rent\u201d really works<\/a><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a problem: Nearly all Americans depend on those commie pinko programs to some extent, including many Republican voters. So the ideologues are always forced to couch their desire to slash federal spending to the bone in some version of \u201cWe have to kill the programs in order to save them.\u201d Nobody buys it, and the world moves on.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in all three of his presidential campaigns Donald Trump ran on promises to protect those programs, and under his leadership, other Republicans have mostly kept their plans on the down low. Who can forget the moment in Joe Biden\u2019s 2023 State of the Union address when he declared that the GOP wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare? The Republican side of the room hilariously exploded in high dudgeon that he would even suggest such a thing.<\/p>\n

Only a couple of months later,they were already forming congressional \u201cworking groups\u201d to discuss how to cut those program. By the next year, when Project 2025 was unveiled, it was all there. Among other things, they proposed to raise the retirement age to 69 or 70, alter the benefit schedule and cut disability payments. They wanted to move toward privatizing Medicare entirely by making its already-privatized side program, Medicare Advantage, the default choice for everybody so insurance companies can more easily deny care and reap even bigger profits.<\/p>\n

But that was just the latest attack in a long history. The Heritage Foundation has been putting out these policy blueprints for decades, and every single one of them features some harebrained scheme to degrade or eliminate the retirement programs. They\u2019ve proposed letting younger workers \u201copt out\u201d of paying into Social Security or collecting it,<\/span>which would bankrupt the programs in record time. They\u2019ve pushed for total privatization and means testing, which would break the universal compact.<\/p>\n

Never once, oddly enough, have they suggested raising the cap on the maximum earnings subject to Social Security taxes. Asking wealthier people to pay payroll taxes on wages above $185,000 would fund the system long into the future. But of course, that\u2019s the last thing Republicans want. The whole point of their years of endeavor is to end it once and for all.<\/p>\n

\n

Asking wealthier people to pay payroll taxes on wages above $185,000 would fund the system long into the future. Of course, that\u2019s the last thing Republicans want.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We might have thought that Trump\u2019s promises would at least have kept the jackals at bay until he\u2019s off the stage. But it\u2019s pretty clear that our president has checked out and only cares about revenge, monuments, prizes and grift at this point. If the extremists around him can get him to believe that he\u2019s building his legacy as the greatest president in history by \u201csaving\u201d the programs with some new privatization scheme akin to his \u201cTrump baby bonds,\u201d he\u2019ll do it in a heartbeat<\/p>\n

In fact, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has openly suggested that the \u201c401(k)s for babies\u201d might create aroad map<\/span>toward the Social Security privatization effort that failed under George W. Bush. That was 20 years ago,when they were telling us that the program was doomed to \u201crun out of money\u201d before 2026. (That actually can\u2019t happen unless the entire U.S. government \u201cruns out of money,\u201d in which case we have much bigger problems.) So the GOP is overdue for another run at this.<\/p>\n

Read more SpaceX IPO: Why insiders like Elon Musk are much likelier to cash in big than public buyers<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, it looks like they\u2019re gearing up for it.House Speaker Mike Johnson said this to<\/span> a conservative radio host this week:<\/p>\n

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The largest spending items, the reason we\u2019re in trouble, are because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot \u2014 mandatory spending, that is, your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security \u2014 they have to be adjusted and fixed. We have a plan to do that next year, and it\u2019s critical because we\u2019re at $40 trillion-plus in debt. At some point, you get into a hole so deep you can\u2019t climb out of it, so desperate times call for desperate measures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Maybe we could think about reversing some of those tax cuts for billionaires Johnson and Trump love so much. Or we could put a stop to Trump\u2019s foreign adventures, which are costing the taxpayers untold billions. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve Trump\u2019s$1.15 trillion<\/em>Pentagon budget last week, and Congress has appropriated $518 billion over the last year for the Department of Homeland Security to deport working people who arepaying into Social Security<\/span>with no prospect of ever collecting benefits.Maybe they could think about dialing back some of this reckless spending on wars and police actions that nobodywants and<\/span>are making everyone poorer and less secure.<\/p>\n

If the times are desperate, Mr. Speaker, it\u2019s because the country is being run by people like you and Donald Trump, who seem determined to ruin it.<\/p>\n

One might suspect Johnson knows that he\u2019s not likely to be speaker next year, so there will be no legislation aimed at cutting the safety net programs. Their plan at thispoint is to maximally demagogue aroundthe latest Social Security report, which says an<\/span> impending shortfall of the Social Security \u201ctrust fund\u201d \u2014 which is an accounting gimmick \u2014 will hit in 2032 or 2034.<\/p>\n

That would effectively trigger a political crisis that endangers the program\u2019s solvency, because that\u00a0 \u201ctrust fund\u201d is what allows the government to pay out Social Security benefits every year without a specific appropriation from Congress. If there\u2019s a shortfall, as now predicted, Congress will have to make up the money. What are the odds Democrats will be able to do that, whether or not they hold a majority, without the draconian cuts Republicans are certain to demand? Imagine the government-shutdown scenarios that include older people not getting their checks. Given the extremist majority that now dominates the GOP, that\u2019s a real possibility.<\/p>\n

EconomistPaul Krugman explainsin his newsletter that the shortfall is actually quite modest and easily accounted for \u2014 if the government exercises some common sense. This problem is actually temporary because members of the the massive baby boom generation are now largely retired, and their numbers will gradually diminish in the years ahead. As mentioned above, we could rethink this crusade to deport manythe workers who\u2019ve been propping up the system for years, we could tax rich people on more of their income, and we could decide to <\/span>do something about America\u2019s outrageous<\/span>income inequality, which is distorting everything.<\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019ll do all of that this time around. But I\u2019m not betting on it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain \u201cboy who cried wolf\u201d quality to the perennial alarms about the GOP\u2019s lust to get rid of these big federal programs that go back to FDR\u2019s New Deal (Social Security) and LBJ\u2019s Great Society (Medicare). But make no mistake: The minute they actually get the chance to take them down, they will. There is no article of faith more fundamental to the American conservative creed than the premise that Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs that must be privatized or eliminated altogether. Even the fact that these are universal government programs, available to every American, goes against everything they believe in.<\/p>\n

Read more In defense of the babydoll dress<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump has repeatedly vowed to defend these landmark safety-net programs. It was another lie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,5,341,642,643,221,644,645],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-commentary","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-medicare","tag-mike-johnson","tag-republicans","tag-social-security","tag-taxes"],"yoast_head":"\nGOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=392\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security - Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trump has repeatedly vowed to defend these landmark safety-net programs. 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