Economist Paul Krugman tears down right-wing arguments that Social Security and Medicare are doomed

When President Joe Biden gave his 2023 State of the Union address on Tuesday night, February 7, he aggressively vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare from GOP efforts to "sunset" or undermine those programs. Biden made it clear that he was not talking about all Republicans or all conservatives, but he was definitely calling out the Republicans who believe that Social Security and Medicare should be abolished or privatized.

Far-right Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), for example, has proposed that Social Security and Medicare, instead of being renewed automatically, should be reevaluated by Congress every five years. After a five-year period, Scott has argued, Congress should be required to either refund the programs or terminate them. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has criticized Scott's proposal as a bad idea.

A common talking point on the far right is that Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable in their current form and need to be either ended or turned over to the private sector. President George W. Bush, in 2005, called for Social Security's privatization — a proposal that many Democrats successfully used against Republicans in the 2006 midterms.

Liberal economist Paul Krugman, in a February 21 New York Times opinion column, tears apart Republican arguments that Social Security and Medicare are doomed to collapse unless they are seriously altered.

"The GOP response to President Biden's truthful statement that some Republicans want to sunset Medicare and Social Security has been highly gratifying," Krugman argues. "In other words, the party has reacted with sheer panic — plus a startling lack of message discipline, with both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley saying that actually, yes, they do want to privatize or 'reform' Social Security, which is code for gutting it…. The press' response to Biden’s remarks has, however, been less gratifying."

The economist continues, "I've seen numerous declarations from mainstream media that, of course, Medicare and Social Security can't be sustained in their present form…. So, let me try to set the record straight. Yes, our major social programs are on a trajectory that will cause them to cost more in the future than they do today. But how we deal with that trajectory is a choice, and the solution need not involve benefit cuts."

Krugman goes on to point out that the Congressional Budget Office's "projections of future spending have come down."

According to Krugman, "CBO projections now show social insurance spending as a percentage of GDP eventually rising by about five points, which is still a lot but not unimaginably large. And here’s the thing: Half of that is still the assumed rise in health care costs…. It's not at all hard to imagine that improving the incentives to focus on medically effective care could limit cost growth to well below what the CBO is projecting, even now. And if we can do that, the rise in entitlement spending over the next three decades might be more like 3 percent of GDP. That's not an inconceivable burden."

In 2010, the right-wing Club For Growth declared, "Privatize Social Security? Hell, yeah!" And 13 years later, as Biden pointed out in his 2023 State of the Union address, that type of thinking has not gone away.

But Krugman stresses that if Social Security and Medicare are abolished or radically altered at some point in the future, it will be out of "choice" — and not necessity.

"No, Social Security and Medicare aren't inherently unsustainable, doomed by demography," Krugman writes. "We can keep these programs, which are so deeply embedded in American society, if we want to. Killing them would be a choice."