Politics

The Social Security scandal Trump doesn’t want you to know about

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

The Social Security scandal Trump doesn’t want you to know about

Here’s another scandal that Donald Trump doesn’t want you to know about, and it doesn’t involve Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein or Jan. 6. No, this one involves you — specifically, your retirement.

More than 67 million Americans collect Social Security benefits, including roughly 54 million retired workers. Millions more expect — or at least hope — the program will be there when they grow old. Most retirees depend heavily on Social Security for their income; between 10 million and 16 million older Americans would be in poverty without it, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The program disproportionately helps lower-income Americans, women and people of color.

And here’s the scandal: If implemented, Trump’s economic proposals could bankrupt this vital, popular program within six years.

Every one of Trump’s favorite ideas in this campaign would accelerate Social Security’s time to insolvency.

First, a brief explainer: Social Security funds its benefits with payroll taxes on working-age Americans. After a bipartisan funding deal in 1983, the program ran a surplus every year for nearly three decades, building up its trust fund for the retirement of the baby boomers. But in 2021, Social Security started to run a deficit. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the trust fund will run out before 2035. At that point, benefits will immediately shrink by more than 20%, around $400 per month per recipient on average.

This impending crisis, fortunately, is solvable. Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed raising revenue by increasing taxes on Americans who make over $400,000 annually. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Social Security Expansion Act — which Harris co-sponsored as a senator — would go even further: Income over $250,000, as well as business and investment income, would become subject to the payroll tax (currently, payroll tax income is capped at $168,000, so even, say, Jeff Bezos pays no taxes on his income beyond that). These adjustments would make the program solvent for decades, benefits would increase by $200 a month and just 7% of Americans would see their taxes go up. And unlike many tax increases, this one is popular with voters.

Trump has not explained how he would keep Social Security solvent. Worse yet, according to a new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, every one of Trump’s favorite ideas in this campaign would accelerate Social Security’s time to insolvency and increase the resulting cuts to benefits.

Any list of Trump’s preferred proposals would include: mass deportations of immigrants; large tariffs on all imports; and eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits. Some of these ideas are quite popular; Harris has even come out for “no tax on tips.” But taken together, these ideas could be disastrous for Social Security’s future.

Ending taxes on benefits, overtime pay and tips would shrink the program’s revenue streams. The massive tariffs would increase inflation — and therefore the program’s cost-of-living adjustments. Mass deportation of immigrants would remove millions of immigrant wage earners who contribute to Social Security (yes, even many undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports that in combination, these proposals would empty the Social Security trust fund by 2031, four years ahead of the current trajectory and just six years after Trump takes office. And what’s left for retirees would be smaller as well: benefits would shrink by one-third as soon as 2035.

Trump’s third run has been the most plutocrat-friendly yet.

In Trump’s first campaign, he broke with other Republican candidates by promising to “do everything in my power not to touch Social Security.” But as I wrote earlier this year, “when it comes to Social Security … Republicans just can’t help themselves,” and Trump has been around a lot of Republicans for a long time now. When he was president, every one of his budgets proposed cutting Social Security. “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” he told CNBC in March. And now his platform is almost purpose-built to run Social Security into the ground.

But it makes sense that Trump would come around on torpedoing a program whose benefits are most important to the poorest Americans. Trump’s “man of the people” image has always been as fake as his tan, and his third run has been the most plutocrat-friendly yet. His 2017 tax cuts, for example, gave windfalls to the wealthiest but saved some scraps for the less well-off. His new platform doesn’t even do that. An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Trump’s new tariff and tax cut extensions would only benefit the richest 5% of households, those that make at least $360,000. The top 1% — effectively, the millionaire class — would get an annual tax cut of $36,000. The other 95% of the country would pay more in taxes.

I can’t tell voters whether to prioritize democracy, their freedoms or their pocketbooks. But for all three concerns, the candidate who presents the biggest threat is the same: Donald Trump.

James Downie

James Downie is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. He was an editor and columnist for The Washington Post and has also written for The New Republic and Foreign Policy.

Politics

Top GOP groups scale back North Carolina spending

Published

58 minutes ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leading Republicans are pulling back from the North Carolina Senate race, sending a clear message: What was a top-tier battleground at the start of the cycle is no longer worth the money.

The foremost Senate GOP super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, is pausing its future spending in North Carolina and instead launching a seven-figure ad buy in deep-red Kansas, according to one person familiar with the move. The news was first reported by Semafor.

The dramatic change in strategy — less than four weeks before the midterms — comes after SLF previously spent more than $30 million to boost GOP nominee Michael Whatley. It also comes as public polling has continued to show Whatley unable to close the gap against popular former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate.

Republicans are now deprioritizing a state that President Donald Trump carried in all three presidential runs, and that Democrats haven’t won in the Senate since 2008.

“We are all clear-eyed about where North Carolina stands,” said one national GOP operative working on Senate races, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

SLF isn’t the only major GOP group shifting away from North Carolina as Republicans focus on other must-win seats and deep-red states, amid the Iran war, high fuel prices and other economic fallout of the war in Iran.

Earlier Friday, the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, as POLITICO reported. Another major Republican group focused specifically on boosting Whatley — Old North Action — removed $6.5 million in ad reservations from North Carolina’s Senate race last month.

“Michael Whatley is a good man who took one for the team — but with states like Alaska, Kansas, and Texas requiring continued resource commitments, there is only so much,” said another national GOP operative working on midterm races. “Especially against a very popular former Governor in Roy Cooper.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is currently running coordinated ad reservations with six of its battleground candidates. Whatley in North Carolina is not one of them, according to data from advertising tracking service AdImpact.

NRSC regional press secretary Nick Puglia said in a statement that “Whatley will put North Carolina families first by cutting taxes and keeping criminals locked up.”

Whatley for months has struggled to boost his name ID against the much better-known Cooper. Some recent public polls show Cooper leading Whatley by double-digit margins. Private polling has also hardly budged, despite the recent influx of spending, according to a person working on the race.

In a statement, Whatley spokesperson DJ Griffin said the team feels “confident we have the resources” to win in November.

“Roy Cooper recently said about federal elections in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not,’” Griffin said. “Undecided Voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those Late-Breakers typically go Republican.”

AFP Action and Old North Action did not immediately respond to a request for comment about North Carolina. SLF declined to comment.

SLF’s decision came as a shock to some, but not all, North Carolina Republicans — mostly because Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been scheduled to be in North Carolina for an event with Whatley on Thursday night. Thune ended up joining the event virtually, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

For weeks, top Republicans acknowledged North Carolina may be slipping away. One Republican who attended a donor meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and SLF during the Dallas convention told POLITICO that holding the state would be “tough.”

“The map has shifted a little bit, and to be fair, we knew that was going to be a tough one from the beginning,” said one GOP operative working on Senate races, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.

Democrats are not letting up, recognizing that the contest in the purple state could still be close.

“A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades, and North Carolina is a 50-50 state,” Cooper campaign manager Jeff Allen said in a statement.

“We’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense,” Allen said.

One North Carolina GOP strategist said that while Whatley has been a “fine” candidate, the current political climate coupled with Cooper’s long record in the state may be too much to overcome. And while Republicans have repeatedly hammered Cooper on crime, he still has strong favorability ratings from his time as governor.

“He’s really kind of hard to paint as a radical, ’cause, you know, he’s like Aunt Martha. She’s just been there forever. And so it’s just very difficult to get any traction on that, because, you know, people say, ‘well, Roy’s okay,’” they said.

When told that SLF was moving money from North Carolina to Kansas, the strategist responded: “$6.50 diesel fuel will kick your ass.”