I wrote the other day about the Elon and Vivek show planning to cut the so-called “entitlements.” That plan is becoming clearer by the day.
Data from the White House Office of Management and Budget indicates that about 12 percent of federal spending this year will be on Medicare, about 1 in 8 dollars the government disburses. Spending on Medicare is equivalent to 95 percent of the amount spent on national defense.
This means that those interested in cutting federal spending — like President-elect Donald Trump’s allies (and fellow billionaires) Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — were almost necessarily going to eventually arrive at the idea that the government should spend less on programs such as Medicare and Medicare specifically. They like to talk about how they will trim federal spending by targeting the federal workforce, but firing every single nonmilitary employee would eliminate only about 4 percent of the budget. If your plan is to cut a third of the budget (as Musk has said he wants to do)? You’ve got to aim higher than that.
On Thursday, as YouGov was asking people about their insurance coverage, Fox Business was reporting that such cuts were under consideration.
“Nothing is sacrosanct,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) said after a meeting with Musk, Ramaswamy and Republican lawmakers. “Nothing. They’re going to put everything on the table” — which, the Fox host noted, included Social Security and Medicare.
During the campaign, YouGov asked voters to evaluate the importance of different health-care issues. Nearly three-quarters of those age 65 and over said that Medicare and Medicaid were among their most important issues. Those older voters were also more likely than younger ones to say that they trusted Donald Trump on the issue — and were the only group to say they trusted Trump more than they trusted Vice President Kamala Harris.
Those older voters were stupid to take the greatest liar in world history’s word for anything and Republicans have been lying about their plans to cut them for years as well. What a mistake.
Bump makes the point that I’ve been making about all this: Trump isn’t running again and doesn’t have to care about the plebes anymore. However, GOP legislators do:
But there are a lot of Republican legislators, like Norman, who will need to go back to voters in 2026 or 2028, and the Billionaire Boys’ interest in submarining older Americans’ health-care program might be expected to turn up in a lot of campaign ads. Trump has never indicated much concern about the broader Republican Party; his second term in office is poised to put that indifference to the test.
He will not care. It’s all about him. Musk and Ramaswamy know nothing about politics or governance and they are happy to take a meat ax to programs that are irrelevant to them and their rich firends in the name of “efficiency.” Republicans generally are so cowed and flaccid now that a whole bunch of them may put themselves on the chopping block to appease Dear Leader but with a small handful of votes in the House majority I’d bet money that a few will not be willing to sacrifice themselves for this. We’ll have to see.
I hope they try it. It might be the wake up call (woke call?) people need to understand who it is that actually gives a damn about the people and who are living in some abstract dream world where they own the libs and everyone lives happily ever after.
Update—
Josh Marshall weighs in on this as well:
Just Wednesday Ramaswamy went on CNBC and in addition to discussing various other ideas about innovation and efficiency noting that there are “hundreds of billions of dollars of savings to extract just from basic program integrity measures” out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The rest of the quote suggests he thinks he can claw back these savings by cutting off benefits to people who don’t really deserve them or are legally entitled to them.
Whatever!!!
‘Tis not for me to question why one of Donald Trump’s budget cutting czars says he wants to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Social Security and Medicare and another seems to want to abolish Social Security altogether. All that matters is that they do.
Are you represented by a Republican member of Congress? Or really are you represented by a Democratic one? I would right away call their office and ask if they support this plan to make these drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He says “hundreds of billions”, draconian level cuts. They’ve made numerous comments like this over the last few days. But the clearest is this comment to CNBC which I linked above. Ask if they support this or have a position on it. And I’d be grateful if you let me know what you heard.
Thanks.
That’s a good idea. Blogs and indy websites used to gather information like this when Bush was trying to cut social security. It has an effect.