Despite saying often he opposes cutting Social Security and Medicare, and raising taxes, former President Donald Trump has endorsed a Republican House candidate who’s been pushing a commission that could do both of those things.
Trump reiterated his support Tuesday for House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas). On his social media site, Trump reposted a message from late January, in which he endorsed Arrington as “working hard to Cut Wasteful Spending, Grow our Economy, Lower your Taxes, Secure the Border, Support our Military and Vets, and Protect and Defend the Second Amendment.”
Except Arrington has since then publicly said he’d be open to raising taxes to get the ballooning federal budget deficit in closer to balance, and he favors a proposal for a bipartisan fiscal commission seen by critics as a stealthy way to cut entitlements.
A request for comment to Trump’s campaign was not immediately returned.
In making his push for a fiscal commission, Arrington in late February told Semafor taxes should be under consideration as well as Republicans’ traditionally favored way of cutting the deficit, spending cuts.
“It’s only fair to have both revenue and expenditures on the table,” he said. While that formulation is likely politically realistic — any attempt at a bipartisan “grand bargain” is very unlikely to have deficit reduction from only spending cuts or only tax hikes — it is pretty much anathema among most Republicans.
Trump himself has said he wants further tax cuts on top of the large individual and corporate tax reductions made in 2017 if he gets another term.
On Social Security and Medicare, Trump has been consistent he does not want a big overhaul, like had been proposed by former House Speaker Paul Ryan or others. Ryan had proposed basically turning Medicare into a voucher program for seniors, while Trump’s primary opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, has said Social Security needs to be radically changed for workers who are not close to retirement age.
“I will always defend Medicare and Social Security, unlike Birdbrain and unlike, frankly, a lot of other people. Remember that, though, because they’re not going to defend it,” Trump said at a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, in February, using a derogatory nickname for Haley.
“We have such great wealth in this country, we don’t have to play around with Social Security and Medicare,” he said.
Yet boosting the eligibility age for full Social Security benefits to better reflect increased life expectancy would likely be among the ideas a bipartisan fiscal commission would look at.
Arrington’s Budget Committee in January passed a bill setting up a fiscal commission whose job would be to “identify policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve a sustainable debt-to-GDP ratio of the long term, and for any recommendations related to Federal programs for which a Federal trust fund exists, to improve solvency for a period of at least 75 years.”
If a majority of the 16-member fiscal commission agreed, with at least three Republicans and three Democrats on board as a minimum, their recommendations would receive fast-track consideration for votes in the House and Senate.
Social Security’s trust fund is not expected to be able to pay out full benefits starting within the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, making a commission needed, supporters say.
Trump’s endorsement of Arrington shows he would actually be fine with cutting entitlement programs, despite his public statements, according to critics.
“Actions speak louder than words ― time and time again House Republicans have supported a budget plan that would decimate Social Security and Medicare as we know it,” said Viet Shelton, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Trump’s endorsement of Arrington is proof that they are all in on this dangerous agenda that puts a target on working families and seniors who are already wrestling with high costs.”
“We fiercely oppose the fiscal commission legislation that [Arrington’s] committee approved in January as a scheme for cutting benefits while shielding individual members of Congress from accountability,” said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
“Donald Trump insists that he won’t cut Social Security if reelected, but the truth is that he did attempt to cut and undermine the program when he was president,” Adcock said, pointing to Trump’s past support of cutting Social Security disability insurance and temporarily suspending the payroll taxes that pay for Social Security.
Arrington in November defended the idea of a commission, despite the long history of failure by previous such attempts and the suspicion by Democrats it would serve only as cover to cut entitlements. He told HuffPost then a panel could simply serve to boost public awareness.
“If all we do is that, I think that’s success,” he said.
In a related development, the Budget Committee Arrington chairs is set to mark up a budget plan for 2025, the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, on Thursday. While the plan will be nonbinding and extremely unlikely to get support from any Democrats, it could serve as a proxy measure for House Republicans’ seriousness about taking on the budget in an election year.
In seeking to be elected in October to the top job by his fellow Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said one of his plans was to build consensus around a 2025 budget resolution and pass it on the House floor.
That would be unusual because few lawmakers like voting on budgets, which can make for easy campaign ads against them and have few real-world legislative consequences if they are not passed. In fact, no budget resolution has been approved by the House in an election year since 2014.
A spokesman for Johnson did not immediately reply to an email asking if Johnson still intended to hold a vote on a budget resolution should one emerge from the Budget Committee this week.