Without a voting public to face again, Trump is gearing up to cut Social Security and Medicare

There are a thousand election hot takes and post-mortems floating around these days and I'm sure we'll soon come to some consensus about what drove the Trump victory (now down to a whopping 1.48% margin and shrinking.) But if there's one thing we do know it's that he won both of his elections at least in part by shedding some Republican Party orthodoxy that had been bringing the GOP down for ages. He knows a third rail when he sees one.

And if there's one issue that differentiated Trump from other Republicans from the minute he came down that golden escalator it's his promise to preserve the so-called entitlement programs. He made it clear: "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid," and it may have been the key to his success in that first campaign. By so boldly declaring those programs off limits he created an aura of post-ideological Republicanism, something that allowed people to buy into his fake persona as a self-made businessman who played by different rules to get things done.

I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2015

He lied. His proposed budgets cut the programs every year he was in office. As Vox reported back in 2019:

Over the next 10 years, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal aims to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid — instead allocating $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states — $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare (some of that is reclassified to a different department). Their intentions are to cut benefits under Medicaid and Social Security.

Medicare was supposed to be cut as well, through a complicated mechanism that reallocated some of its funds. Obviously, Congress didn't approve those cuts so it didn't happen but it wasn't for lack of trying.

That last budget was put together by the man Trump is bringing back as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and one of the principal authors of Project 2025, Russell Vought. It's highly questionable whether Vought will be as circumspect about the plans to cut the programs this time or whether Trump will care because all of that was predicated on Trump's need to run for office again. Without that hanging over their heads they have no need to hold back. Republicans have wanted to do away with those programs since they were first passed. This may be their chance to finally get it done.

As we know, Trump has pledged to create a sexy new government commission led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy called the "Department of Government Efficiency" or DOGE (the acronym cutely chosen to evoke the crypto scheme by the same name in which Musk is heavily invested.) Vought has said that he plans to work closely with the commission to use executive action to accomplish the slashing and burning of government programs they're promising.

Vought hasn't openly called for cutting Social Security retiree benefits but has promoted cutting disability payments and Medicaid and fully privatizing Medicare. His history suggests, however, that given the go-ahead he will gleefully take a meat ax to the program. Musk, however, has been clear that he believes the government has to be cut to the bone immediately which he admits will cause "hardship" that we will just have to bear. After all, he did that with Tesla and Twitter, how is that different from the United States federal government? Well, except for the massive scale and complexity...

This week, the far-right senator from Utah, Mike Lee, posted a thread on Twitter/X in which he claims that Social Security is a scam that the government mismanages and must be reformed so that people can "invest" their money and avoid "dependence." (Back when America was Great — the 1890s or the 1790s or whenever — that's how it worked. Sure many elderly people lived in abject poverty because they forgot to become rich but at least they had their independence.)

Elon Musk found Lee's fantasy history and disinformation "interesting" and amplified it on his X platform.

🚨🚨🚨

Last night, Sen. Mike Lee wrote a blueprint for destroying Social Security.

Lee’s thread was quickly amplified by Elon Musk.

Republicans have declared war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public. pic.twitter.com/j7oOMhdyNJ

— Social Security Works (@SSWorks) December 3, 2024

It's the same old story. In fact, the last time they tried this after President George W. Bush declared he had a mandate from his re-election victory, it ushered in a massive Democratic congressional takeover in the midterms and a two-term Democratic presidency. The financial crisis hit and everyone in America saw the wisdom of having at least a portion of their old age or disability safety net guaranteed by the government instead of Wall Street. I suppose it's possible that it's ancient history to a lot of people but I kind of doubt it is for anyone over 50.

But it's possible they won't even try to sell it that way. Musk expects people to suffer in order to save the country from bankruptcy which he has decided is imminent. Vought and his right-wing Christian nationalist allies want to completely decimate the "administrative state" so they may just declare that the program is insolvent and cut the benefits across the board.

There are at least some members of Congress ready for action. Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia, a Republican, said on Fox News they have to "have the stomach" to make some "hard decisions."

With what will be a tiny majority in the House it's very hard to see anything like that passing. Unlike Trump, they have to face the voters again. But we do know that Vought is a big fan of "impoundment" which basically says that the president can spend money however he wants regardless of what Congress has intended. (He actually used this concept to justify the withholding of funds to Ukraine which led to Trump's first impeachment.) This practice was actually outlawed in the 1970s after the previous criminal president, Richard Nixon, refused to allow funds to be spent the way the Democratic congress allocated it but it hasn't been fully tested in court. It is highly likely that the DOGE group and Vought at OMB are going to try to use this concept to sidestep Congress completely. Whether they have the nerve to attempt it with something as massive as Social Security or Medicare remains to be seen. But those programs are the right's great white whale and I wouldn't be surprised if they make another attempt to finally kill them.

Donald Trump certainly won't care. He never has to face another voter and that is the only reason he ever promised to keep his hands off of the programs in the first place. Trump can do somersaults on the third rail now and it can't hurt him at all. His party is another story, but he doesn't care about them either.