Former President Donald Trump has been inconsistent with his messaging around Social Security and his ideas for the plan’s future. During a March interview with CNBC, Trump said that “cutting” could keep the Social Security program for retirement-age folks solvent.
“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump told CNBC. “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.”
Shortly after the CNBC interview, Trump told Breitbart that he had no plans to make cuts to Social Security.
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“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump told the news outlet. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
Although Trump did not outline a plan to keep the Social Security program solvent, he did promise to look for ways to cut expenses elsewhere instead of making cuts to these benefits.
“There’s so many things we can do,” Trump told Breitbart. “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
Let’s examine some of his other takes on the program.
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Trump Has Been Critical of Social Security in the Past
Before becoming president, Trump called the Social Security program a “Ponzi scheme.”
“The truth is undeniable, the workers of America have been forced to invest a sixth of our wages into a huge Ponzi scheme,” Trump wrote in the 2000 book “The America We Deserve.” “The solution to the Great Social Security Crisis couldn’t be more obvious: Allow every American to dedicate some portion of their payroll taxes to a personal Social Security account that they could own and invest in stocks and bonds.”
In the book, Trump also advocated for raising the Social Security retirement age. “We can also raise the age for receipt of full Social Security benefits to 70,” he wrote.
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Trump Proposed Cuts To Social Security During His Presidency
Trump’s proposed fiscal 2021 budget endorsed cuts to the Social Security program, specifically disability benefits.
His budget advocated for a $75 billion decrease in spending for the two federal disability programs — Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — over the next decade.
Trump’s Latest Promise
During a recent campaign appearance in Doral, Florida, Trump promised that he would not cut Social Security benefits or raise the retirement age.
“I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicare,” he said. “And I will not raise the retirement age by one day.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Here Are All the Promises Trump Has Made About Social Security If He’s Reelected
