The 501(c)4 organization Club For Growth will release an ad later Monday comparing former President Donald Trump’s stance on Social Security reforms to that of President Joe Biden.
The 30-second ad, titled “Promise,” will run on Fox News in Palm Beach, Florida, and notes that both presidents’ refusal to consider reforms to the entitlement program will lead to automatic benefit cuts. The Social Security Trust Fund’s reserves will be depleted by 2033, according to the fund’s board of trustees, leading to a 23% cut in benefits. However, Republican and Democrat leaders have agreed that entitlements will not be reformed as part of debt ceiling negotiations.
“Social Security is not just a program: it’s a promise,” the narrator says in the ad, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. “But Donald Trump’s plan? Same as Biden’s. What does that mean for you? Benefit cuts of 23%, triggered automatically in ten years or less by the Trump-Biden Social Security scheme. Seniors on fixed incomes. Americans nearing retirement staring down the barrel of financial catastrophe. That’s not what we were promised. Tell Trump and Biden: stop allowing cuts to Social Security.”
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Democrats have accused Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security, despite pledges from Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell not to touch the program. During his 2023 State of the Union address, Biden noted Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s proposal to end all federal programs as evidence that the GOP supports “sunsetting” entitlements. Republicans in the gallery responded by shouting out “liar.”
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurance programs accounted for 46% of the federal budget in Fiscal Year 2022, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Social Security and healthcare spending are expected to double by 2033, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and will make up 81% of federal spending increases. (RELATED: Here’s How Congress Could Actually Balance The Federal Budget)
“The Biden-Trump position may sound like a pledge to protect Social Security, but it isn’t. The law ‘without any change” requires a huge benefit cut in 10 years,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh wrote in an April Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Club For Growth has steadily increased its criticism of Trump with the 45th president out of office. It endorsed against him in the 2022 Pennsylvania and Ohio Senate primaries, and did not invite Trump to its April donor retreat.