Trump Calls For Making Permanent Cuts To Both The Medicare And Social Security Payroll Taxes
President Trump said over the weekend, “If I’m victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax.”
Currently, employers and employees split the 12.4% payroll tax on the first $137,700 of 2020 earnings and also split the 2.9% Medicare tax on all earnings. The self-employed pay the entire tax.
Trump not only wants to suspend these taxes during the pandemic crisis, he says he wants to make permanent cuts to these taxes.
First, the only people who pay these taxes are people who still have their jobs and their earnings. With millions unemployed it can be argued that it would make more sense to increase deficit spending by providing help directly to those who don’t have any earningsthe unemployed.
But the bigger question revolves around the suspension of funding to Medicare and Social Securityparticularly permanent cuts.
Both the Medicare and Social Security trust funds are running out of moneyboth face an inability to pay full benefits if their problems aren’t solved by either increasing funding or cutting benefits. That is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to happen for Medicare in 2025 and Social Security in 2031.
Former Democrat Jeff Van Drew Explains Why He Switched To Gop
Meanwhile, scores of former Republican administration officials have endorsed Bidens campaign, including dozens of former George W. Bush staffers who announced their intent to back Biden this week.
Theres also a small group of former Trump administration officials who worked in the Department of Homeland Security who have chosen to back Biden.
But Van Drews speech provides Trump a lane to show the opposite effect of his presidency on some Democrats. Trump made a big show of Van Drew switching parties during the impeachment process and hosted him at the White House for a meeting.
Rudy Giuliani, who has served as Donald Trumps lawyer and a top confidant, in his speech Thursday night will attack Joe Biden over violence in U.S. cities over the summer.
Giulianis speech will fall in line with what has been the main theme of Trumps convention hammering Biden over protests against police brutality, some of which have led to violence or vandalism. Just this week, a pro-police sympathizer allegedly shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin after a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times by police.
Their silence was so deafening that it reveals an acceptance of this violence because they will accept anything they hope will defeat President Donald Trump, he added.
Trump Hits Biden Over Trade Manufacturing
Job losses resulting from NAFTA tend to be overstated but one major study found that more than 850,000 jobs were displaced by the pact.
Robert E. Scott of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute found that about 851,700 U.S. jobs were displaced by the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico from 1993 to 2014.
When it comes to normalizing trade relations with China a status President George W. Bush formally granted in 2001 after China entered the World Trade Organization U.S. job losses have been larger, according to studies.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service wrote in 2018, citing a 2014 study by the Economic Policy Institute, that growth in the U.S. goods trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013 eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs .
If you add the 851,700 figure with the 3.2 million figure, you would see a figure that approximates 4 million, which is roughly 25 percent of the estimated 17 million manufacturing jobs that existed in 1994.
Experts have pointed out, however, that technology and automation has likely had at least as much of an effect on these losses in manufacturing jobs, with many noting that the losses would have occurred even without NAFTA.
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Sen Tom Cotton: ‘joe Biden Would Return Us To A Weak Dangerous Past’
Five months later, he told NBC News Meet the Press that hed privately told Obama after that meeting had ended to, Follow your instincts, Mr. President and that Biden had wanted him to take one more day to do one more test to see if he was there.
He further leaned into that version in a 2015 interview, saying that I thought he should go, but follow his own instincts. Biden then contradicted his initial claims, saying, imagine if I had said in front of everyone, ‘Don’t go,’ or ‘Go,’ and his decision was a different decision. It undercuts that relationship.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, in her 2014 book Hard Choices, wrote that Biden remained skeptical about the raid, while Gates in his 2014 book, wrote that he and Biden were both skeptics.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., leveled several accusations against Joe Biden, mostly regarding his views and actions as vice president on foreign policy. This one, about what a former defense secretary had to say about Biden’s judgment, is accurate.
Cotton said that Barack Obama’s own secretary of defense said Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major national security decision over the past four decades.
This is true. Robert Gates, who served as President Obamas secretary of defense for more than two years, wrote in his 2014 memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary At War, that Biden had been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Is This The Plan
While Goss states in his letter that he is not aware that anyone has proposed the
hypothetical legislation suggested by the four senators, the president has commented publicly on the issue.
At a press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, the president vowed to make these tax cuts permanent if hes reelected. The article quotes the president saying, If Im victorious on Nov. 3, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax. Im going to make them all permanent. This indicates at least one half of the claim is true.
Yes, the president says he plans to cut off the bloodline of Social Security funding . But he still has not explained whether or not he will replace the funding with funds from elsewhere in the budget, or where it would come from.
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At Some Point They Will Be On Agenda He Tells Cnbc
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump appeared to suggest in a television interview Wednesday that hes willing to consider entitlement cuts in the future, a move that would mark a tectonic shift from his stance during his 2016 run for the White House.
Trump suggested he was open to a cut in social safety net benefits, such as Medicare and Social Security, in comments during a CNBC interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
While Trump has repeatedly talked up strong economic growth, the federal budget deficit has swollen as his administration has pressed for tax cuts and increased government spending. Asked if entitlement cuts would ever be on his agenda, Trump responded, At some point they will be.
As a candidate for the White House, Trump stood apart from much of the GOP primary field as he vowed to oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while also ensuring every American had health coverage.
In the CNBC interview, Trump called tackling entitlement spending the easiest of all things and suggested higher economic growth would make it easier to reduce spending on the programs.
Well, were going were going to look, he said. We also have assets that weve never had. I mean weve never had growth like this.
The budget deficit is expected to reach $1 trillion this year, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office.
More recently, Trumps 2020 budget called for deep cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals.
Trump Keeps Proposing Entitlement Cuts And Then Denying That He Did So
In 2015 and 16, Trump differentiated himself from the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls by campaigning on a vow to not cut entitlements.
Im not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and Im not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid, Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.
As his budget proposals indicate, this promise was an empty one. Trump, however, seems to realize that cutting entitlements is a political loser for him, and as a result has continued to make assertions about preserving them that are at odds with reality.
All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they dont, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!
Donald J. Trump
Last month, however, Trump seemed to have a moment of radical honesty when he told CNBC during an interview conducted in Davos that at some point entitlement cuts will be on the table.
CNBC: Will entitlements ever be on your plate ?TRUMP: “At some point they will be”CNBC: But you said you wouldn’t do that in the pastTRUMP: “We also have assets that we never had”
Aaron Rupar
Those comments created a negative stir, so the very next day Trump tried to walk them back.
Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!
Donald J. Trump
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Huge Crowds Gather To Both Watch And Protest Trump Speech
Jeff Van Drew, the New Jersey Republican who changed his party affiliation after voting against Donald Trumps impeachment, will speak at the Republican convention on Thursday.
Van Drew joins a limited number of Democrats or former Democrats who spoke on Trumps behalf at his re-nominating convention. It provides a contrast with Biden, who featured higher-profile Republicans speaking at his event.
Democrats Have Already Signaled Trumps Budget Is Going Nowhere
While Trump tries to have it both ways by proposing entitlement cuts while claiming hes not really doing that, Treasury Department spokesperson Monica Crowley was somewhat more straightforward during a Monday morning appearance on Fox Business.
Asked by host Stuart Varney if she agrees that the new budget hits the safety net, Crowley said the president understands that Washingtons habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.
Treasury Secretary Assistant Sec. Monica Crowley defends cuts to entitlements in Trump’s new 2021 budget proposal: “The president also understands that Washington’s habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.”
Aaron Rupar
But for Trump, not all spending is bad. While his budget cuts non-defense spending by 5 percent, he actually slates defense spending for an increase to $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021.
Budget proposals are just that proposals. And while Trump insists that Republicans are the ones trying to save entitlements from destruction, the irony is that the truth is exactly the opposite: Entitlement cuts are dead on arrival as long as Democrats control a chamber of Congress.
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House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth alluded to this reality in a statement he released on Sunday blasting Trump for proposing deep cuts to critical programs that help American families.
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Trump Budget Cuts Trillions From Social Security Medicare And Medicaid
WASHINGTONCongressional Democrats, progressive groups, and defenders of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all blasted President Donald Trumps proposed budget cuts for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Two top government worker unions chimed, in, too, slamming Trump for proposing only a 1% raise for calendar 2021, far below inflation and below this years 3.1%, which Trump had resisted. Meanwhile, Teachers President Randi Weingarten blasted Trumps plans to slash programs that help kidsand their parents.
Trumps $4.8 trillion spending plan, including a $1 trillion deficit, proposes an 8% hike, to $780 billion, in spending for the military and cuts just about everywhere else: Food stamps, Social Security , Medicaid , and Medicare.
One estimate put Trumps Medicare cut at $478 billion over a decade, while another, from former Democratic White House aide Keith Boykin, topped $850 billion. The Medicaid cuts would both throw people out of the program and cut the payments the federal government makes to states for those who remain.
Reiterating a longtime GOP goal, Trump wants to make those Medicaid payments into block grants and cap them. States can then useor not useas they please. Block grants would let Republican-run states cut benefits even more.
The Trump budget for 2021 is a budget of, by, and for the 1%, said Sanders. It reflects profoundly unethical priorities and shows the president isand it gives me no great pleasure to say thisa liar.
He’d No Longer Have Reelection Concerns
Another important point to consider is that Trump winning a second term would remove any concerns about having to campaign for another election. This lack of worry about future elections is what often inspires second-term presidents to take on issues that they may have previously swept under the rug.
This would bring a Trump quote from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013 into greater focus. Said Trump:
As Republicans, if you think you are going to change very substantially for the worse Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in any substantial way, and at the same time you think you are going to win elections, it just really is not going to happen … What we have to do and the way we solve our problems is to build a great economy.
At the time, this was Trump’s way of suggesting that direct fixes to Social Security will cost the GOP votes. That’s because any direct fix will make some group of people worse off than they were before. However, without any future elections to concern himself with, a second-term president might be willing to tackle direct changes to Social Security head-on.
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The continued threats from the GOP to these two popular programs also contradict public sentiment. According to Gallup, nearly two decades of polling on Social Security indicates that a majority of adults want Social Security left completely intact. Medicare also generally sees positive poll numbers in Gallup surveys. And while Medicaid and Medicare are not the same, Medicaid is one of the largest public programs run by the federal government. As recently as last week, voters in Republican-led Missouri joined those in Oklahoma and other GOP-helmed states to expand lower-income public insurance options like Medicaid. This would seem to put Trump and other GOP politicians at odds with the general sentiment on tax-funded programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Medicare and Social Security will almost certainly come up on the campaign trail, if public sentiment on the popular programs is to be believed. While Republicans are bent on defunding the programs , Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has pledged to keep Medicare as it is, ensuring there is no disruption to the current Medicare system. And on Social Security, Biden wants to increase funding to the program by having Americans with especially high wages to pay the same taxes on those earnings that middle-class families pay.
Correction: A previous version of this story used outdated data to account for the number of Arizonans on Medicare. We regret the error.
