GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security [View all]

GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security
Trump has repeatedly vowed to defend these landmark safety-net programs. It was another lie

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published June 13, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) One of the least remarked-upon chapters in the Republicans’ ghastly Project 2025 document dealt with their plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, ostensibly to fix the impending trust fund shortfall and eliminate the national deficit all at once. The reason hardly anyone talked about it is that if there’s one thing we know about Republicans, from the so-called moderates to the most extreme MAGA true believers, it’s that they want to do away with those commie pinko programs once and for all.

But there’s a problem: Nearly all Americans depend on those commie pinko programs to some extent, including many Republican voters. So the ideologues are always forced to couch their desire to slash federal spending to the bone in some version of “We have to kill the programs in order to save them.” Nobody buys it, and the world moves on.

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But that was just the latest attack in a long history. The Heritage Foundation has been putting out these policy blueprints for decades, and every single one of them features some harebrained scheme to degrade or eliminate the retirement programs. They’ve proposed letting younger workers “opt out” of paying into Social Security or collecting it, which would bankrupt the programs in record time. They’ve pushed for total privatization and means testing, which would break the universal compact.

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Well, it looks like they’re gearing up for it. House Speaker Mike Johnson said this to a conservative radio host this week:



Maybe we could think about reversing some of those tax cuts for billionaires Johnson and Trump love so much. Or we could put a stop to Trump’s foreign adventures, which are costing the taxpayers untold billions. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve Trump’s $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget last week, and Congress has appropriated $518 billion over the last year for the Department of Homeland Security to deport working people who are paying into Social Security with no prospect of ever collecting benefits. Maybe they could think about dialing back some of this reckless spending on wars and police actions that nobody wants and are making everyone poorer and less secure. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/13/gop-has-a-new-plan-to-kill-off-medicare-and-social-security/