Opinion | Republicans are suddenly interested in cutting Social Security

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : Over the years, he has staked out every possible position on Social Security -- sometimes within hours of each other.
60% : President George W. Bush after all, proposed privatizing Social Security after he won a second term in 2004.
54% : With narrow majorities in the House and Senate, just a handful of Republicans could tank any proposal, and Social Security has one of the strongest lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts in Washington.
52% : In a 2000 book, he too used the line about Social Security being "a huge Ponzi scheme," called for raising the retirement age to 70 and proposed privatizing the program.
51% : Since Social Security is the largest single program in the budget, that would seem to indicate it might be a target, especially since Musk also said that "everyone's going to have to take a haircut" under his plans.
47% : "We've gotta bring the Democrats in and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare," said McCormick, who represents the wealthiest congressional district in Georgia.
46% : "In the other chamber, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted a long thread on the social media platform X about the constitutionality and practicality of Social Security, invoking the classic conservative trope of comparing it to a "Ponzi scheme that's running out of new investors.
41% : But when Trump ran in the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he cast himself as the program's protector, saying "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican."As president, he continued to insist that he would not touch Social Security benefits even as he took actions that indicated he might.
37% : But despite its unpopularity, Republicans somehow keep coming back to the idea of cutting Social Security.
28% : Trump will be out of office by then.
19% : But while Trump may not end up cutting Social Security directly, his other plans may lead to cuts in the end.
16% : So, would Trump try to cut Social Security?
16% : Trump wouldn't even start with Bush's level of single-minded focus on the issue, either, as he'll be too busy promoting his other plans to deport millions who are in the country illegally, restructure the federal government by fiat and levy tariffs right and left.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.