From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Trump Isn’t Serious About the National Debt   
   He joins Democrats in saying that any reform to Social Security would toss   
   granny off a cliff.   
   By The Editorial Board, Jan. 19, 2024, Wall St. Journal   
   MAGA Republicans claim to be worried about the country’s $34 trillion debt,   
   and this week the House Budget Committee advanced a bill to create a   
   bipartisan fiscal commission. Have they checked with Donald Trump?   
      
   After winning the Iowa caucuses Monday, Trump replayed a golden oldie of a   
   campaign pledge: “We’re also going to pay off the national debt. It’s   
   about time.” He said the same thing in 2016, before he added about $8   
   trillion to the tab. Roughly    
   half of that was Covid relief, so perhaps voters grade him on a curve. Less   
   forgivable is that he’s now playing for the Democrats on entitlements.   
      
   “Americans were promised a secure retirement. Nikki Haley’s plan ends   
   that,” says the grim narrator of a Trump ad playing in New Hampshire. A new   
   radio spot adds: “Year after year, you paid into Social Security. Now Nikki   
   Haley wants to keep you    
   from collecting what’s yours.” The Trump campaign alleges Haley would cut   
   benefits “for 82 percent of Americans.”   
      
   This is dishonest. Social Security is running out of money, and doing nothing   
   will result in a 23% cut to benefits within a decade. The retirement trust   
   fund, according to the latest report, will be depleted in 2033, at which point   
   the incoming cash “   
   will be sufficient to pay 77% of scheduled benefits.” Does Trump have any   
   plan to prevent this outcome in only 9 years? Nope.   
      
   Haley hasn’t issued a detailed proposal, but what she says doesn’t fit   
   Trump’s narrative. “I will protect those receiving Social Security and   
   Medicare—that’s a promise,” she said last fall. “We’ll keep these   
   programs the same for anyone    
   who’s in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or older, period.”   
      
   Then she added that she would “limit benefits on the wealthy” and “raise   
   the retirement age only for younger people who are just entering the system.   
   Americans are living 15 years longer than they were in the ’30s. If we   
   don’t get out of this    
   20th-century mindset, Social Security and Medicare won’t survive.”   
      
   Whatever Trump might say about getting the debt under control, it won’t   
   happen without changes to these programs. Social Security was 19% of total   
   federal outlays in 2022. Medicare was 12% and Medicaid 9%. The category of   
   “other means tested    
   entitlements” was another 10%. Add those up, and they’re half of federal   
   spending. As social programs keep growing, they crowd out everything that’s   
   counted as “discretionary,” including national defense, which was 12%.   
      
   This problem will get worse. By the year 2053, Social Security outlays will   
   climb to 6.2% of GDP from 4.8%, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.   
   Medicare will go to 5.5% from 2.8%. “Rising health care costs per person and   
   the aging of the    
   population are the main reasons for the sharp increase in projected spending   
   on the major health care programs,” CBO dryly notes. Ditto for Social   
   Security.   
      
   Republicans used to grasp this reality, and Democrats hammered them as   
   heartless while pretending not to understand math. Recall the Medicare attack   
   ad in which a doppelgänger of Rep. Paul Ryan pushed a grandma in a wheelchair   
   off a cliff.   
      
   Today the putative leader of the Republican Party is taking the same line   
   against Haley. She’s the one candidate in 2024 who is honest about what’s   
   driving the debt, and Mr. Trump is trashing her for it. Ron DeSantis has   
   switched jerseys on this    
   issue as well. He has been arguing that because life expectancy has dipped   
   slightly amid Covid and the opioid epidemic, the U.S. can’t possibly adjust   
   Social Security to account for the enormous gains in health and longevity   
   since the 30s.   
      
   It’s dizzying. House Republicans are at one another’s throats over modest   
   bills to keep the government running, and some of the rabble rousers are now   
   debating whether to knife their second Speaker in three months. Yet Trump is   
   running a presidential    
   campaign all but promising America a future as a broke, weak welfare state,   
   and none of the MAGA debt agonists object. Incoherence, thy name is Trump’s   
   Republican Party.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-social-security-nation   
   l-debt-republicans-nikki-haley-7c468ff2   
      
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