Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D. OH) re-election campaign:
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D. OH)
“I am going to save Social Security without any cuts.” -Donald Trump, 5/21/15
“[Trump’s] proposal is a Trojan horse [...It] would, if enacted, lead to the destruction of working Americans' fundamental economic security.” -Nancy Altman, co-chair of Strengthen Social Security, quoted in Los Angeles Times, 4/10/17
Another day, another broken promise from Donald Trump.
This time, it’s seniors who stand to lose -- and they stand to lose a lot. Trump is proposing a drastic change to the way we fund Social Security, removing the dedicated funding streams from payroll taxes and making Social Security subject to political fights every time budget season rolls around.
For seniors who spent a lifetime paying into Social Security, this means that their economic future would be in the hands of Washington politicians. The income that seniors depend upon could become yet another partisan bargaining chip.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was creating Social Security, he was aware that someone like Trump might try to pull something like this. (Not a big surprise from a President who spoke out against “malefactors of great wealth.”) Here’s what FDR said back in the 1930s:
“We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions. … With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”
Trump is planning to test not only FDR’s wisdom but also Americans’ resolve. Our current president has made a career out of making promises he has no intention of keeping, and we are not going to let him stiff our seniors the way he stiffed the contractors at his hotels.
