Former Vice President Mike Pence took a direct shot against his ex-boss, Donald Trump, in a podcast appearance during which he touched on the need to reform Social Security and Medicaid.
“Remember, Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency,” Pence said on The Dispatch podcast. “In fairness, my old running mate’s policy is identical to Joe Biden’s: That we’re never even gonna talk about Social Security and Medicare. I think we owe my three granddaughters better than that.”
“If we just stay on the trajectory we’re on, Sarah, $32 trillion will go to $150 trillion in the next 30 years. And if you wait to deal with it at that point, budget experts will tell you — left, right, and center — you only have bad choices. You’re either cutting programs that people really rely on, or you’re gonna double middle class taxes and probably introduce a European style taxation system called a VAT,” Pence continued.
“So, it’s the only way that the numbers work. But if you introduce common sense and compassionate reforms for Americans under the age of 40 now, and you communicate that to the American people, we can stave off that debt crisis and put our country back on a path of fiscal solvency.”
Pence is among a plethora of other Republicans considering throwing their hat in the 2024 ring. While once one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, Pence soured on Trump – and vice versa – following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
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7 Responses
Please, this guy is simply Iying. Putting on this ultra empathetic face doesn’t change that. I didn’t understand the social security situation and was always afraid that it would be bankrupt. Then, I read a macroeconomics textbook and watched a course in finance from John Geanakoplos at Yale and realized how this wasn’t true at all. The trust fund which invests the surplus will be bankrupt if not reformed, but there will always be social security forever as long as the next generation pays. Geanakoplos gave the example of how if every child pays 1000 dollars to repay a loan taken by their great great grandparent, and repaid by their parents and grandparents etc, the money will always be repaid but each generation lossed a bit because of the interest they could have gotten. There’s a lot of complexity to the social security system and I recommend people watching the Yale course, but the constant mispainting of the problem by Republicans is truly dishonest.
Also, when they talk about the budget, it’s simply unprofessional to just state a number 150 billion. That doesn’t matter at all as long as the dept to GDP ratio isn’t too high. A healthy dept to GDP is 60 to 70 percent but since the dollar is so strong, some argue that the US can go even higher. Look at the list of world dept to GDP.
The highest:
Venezuela — 350%
Japan — 266%
Sudan — 259%
Greece — 206%
Lebanon — 172%
Cabo Verde — 157%
Italy — 156%
Libya — 155%
Portugal — 134%
Singapore — 131%
Bahrain — 128%
United States — 128%
The lowest:
Brunei — 3.2%
Afghanistan — 7.8%
Kuwait — 11.5%
Congo (Dem. Rep.) — 15.2%
Eswatini — 15.5%
Burundi — 15.9%
Palestine — 16.4%
Russia — 17.8%
Botswana — 18.2%
Estonia — 18.2%
I guess politics turns a pussycat brutal.
More interesting than his views on the Social Security trust fund is what he told Special Counsel Smith today during 6 hours of testimony on what Trump did/said in relation to January 6th and his efforts to stay in office
No pussycat. No nice clean cut married church going fellow either. Thank God I don’t live never lived in America
@dan the: this faulty logic is exactly what the former BP was addressing.
As far this theory regarding the grandchildren repaying their great grandparents debts, you are counting on each generation being the same size or greater than the generations prior, which just isn’t the case.
And there should be reforms. Life expectancies have gone up by over a decade (prior to the Covid die off) while the retirement age has not. This leads to the average retire recording more than their total contribution, and since the money is not being invested, it isn’t growing.
As far as the debt (not dept) to gdp ratio, while the USA is probably not going to destroy its economy by going a little over 80% debt-GDP ratio, that option should be maintained as a last resort to rebuild in a crisis or to furnish the military should there be another world war. Using that leverage just to avoid the hard work of reforming the budgetary process and most of the allocations within said budget is reckless
FICA taxes are RIDICULOUS!