New Ad Turns The Tables On Trump And His ‘Plan’ To ‘Cut’ Entitlements
Mary Lou Masters on April 24, 2023
A new advertisement launched by a conservative group Monday compares the entitlement “plan[s]” of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, and states that they both would “cut” benefits.
The Club for Growth advertisement, which will run in the Palm Beach Post and the New York City edition of the Wall Street Journal, indicates that both men have the same stance — to “cut” Social Security by at least 20%. David McIntosh, president of the fiscally conservative political action committee (PAC), believes that Trump and Biden’s plan “to do nothing” will only make way for entitlement reform.
“This is an issue ad highlighting that Biden, Trump, and many establishment DC policymakers have the same position on Social Security – to do nothing and force seniors to be hit with massive Social Security cuts,” McIntosh said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s time for a responsible discussion on how we can move forward and do what needs to be done to protect seniors and all Americans.”
The ad comes after McIntosh drew the similarity between Trump and Biden on April 13, according to a WSJ editorial featured in the ad. While the presidents’ stance on entitlements comes across as attempts to protect Social Security, it would force benefit cuts in ten years, McIntosh said.
“I guarantee you I will protect Social Security and Medicare without any change. Guaranteed. I won’t allow it to be gutted or eliminated, as MAGA Republicans have threatened to do,” Biden said on March 10
“I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is,” Trump previously said in 2017. “I want to leave Social Security as is, I want to make our country rich again so we can afford it.”
The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will only be able to provide payments until 2024, but could run out before then due to unexpected inflation, according to McIntosh’s editorial. If Social Security isn’t touched before the fund depletes, it could trigger cuts of over 20%, McIntosh wrote.
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy echoed McIntosh’s sentiment, and said that Trump and Biden’s stance on doing “nothing” with entitlements will further increase the risk of the Social Security fund dissolving, according to a Washington Examiner report that was featured in the ad.
“You know, both Joe Biden and former President Trump have the same plan, which is to do nothing on social security and to allow a 24% cut to benefits from when the fund goes insolvent in about eight or nine years. They both have the same plan. It does make it harder,” Cassidy said. “When your leading presidential candidates have made the decision to deceive the American people and to say there isn’t a problem when every actuary who looks at this says there is a problem and who is 80 years old, otherwise would be in poverty, will get a cut in benefits, by current law. It makes it hard when they are so irresponsible. It’s true for President Biden and it’s true for former President Trump.”
Neither Trump nor the White House immediately responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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