President Donald Trump repeatedly promised not to cut essential public programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on the campaign trail — but he has found a way to propose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid while pretending they aren't cuts.
That has ominous implications for what could be awaiting Social Security down the line, wrote MSNBC opinion editor James Downey.
"Trump promised during a Fox News interview in February that 'Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched,'" wrote Downey. "But within a day of the interview airing, he endorsed the House GOP’s budget plan, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts. To reconcile the contradiction, the president has tested multiple arguments, but only 'waste, fraud and abuse' has persisted."
And that exact same logic is now being used by some Republican lawmakers to suggest Medicare could be on the chopping block too.
Speaking to Politico, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said, “How much waste, fraud, abuse is there in Medicare — why don’t we go after that? I think we should.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) agreed, saying, “I think anything that is waste, fraud and abuse are obviously open to discussions,”
"If Republicans deem 'waste, fraud and abuse' sufficient cover not just for cuts to Medicaid but for cuts to Medicare as well, what’s to stop them from applying that to Social Security next?" wrote Downey.
This is hardly a hypothetical — already, former Social Security Administration heads have sounded the alarm about Trump administration efforts to purge the federal workforce overseeing Social Security, which could undermine the system's ability to function even if benefits themselves aren't cut.
Some Republicans, notably, are warning this argument doesn't really give them permission to make cuts, Downey wrote.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), for instance, warned, “We should not be touching Medicare. In 2004, President Bush got re-elected and promptly tried to privatize Social Security, and Republicans didn’t win the popular vote for 20 years.” And polls appear to back this up: per the latest numbers from KFF, "More than 70% of Americans, including 44% of Republicans, believe the GOP bill will cause more Americans to be uninsured, for example (and indeed, the CBO estimates those cuts will leave more than 10 million Americans without health insurance)."
The bottom line, Downey concluded, is that "Republicans already have their excuses ready to go. To most Americans, Social Security and Medicare may be entitlements. To Trump and GOP lawmakers, they’re just 'waste, fraud and abuse.'"
