Billionaires Don’t Need Social Security— So Now They Want To Kill It For Everyone Else

It's Not Reform, It's Robbery

On Tuesday, Fox News ran an OpEd penned by Elizabeth Warren about the most recent in a long line of Republican attempts to end Social Security. “We shouldn’t be cutting Social Security services and threatening Americans’ benefits— we should be making the program stronger,” she wrote. “People are struggling with sky-high prices while their retirement savings are evaporating. We need a temporary increase in benefits right now to give people some relief. We should also protect the long-term security of the system by lifting the cap on the amount millionaires and billionaires pay into Social Security, which would also yield enough money to permanently expand benefits… Social Security isn’t something we give away out of the goodness of our hearts. It’s something Americans earned over a lifetime of hard work— an ironclad contract that they can count on. Now, Trump, Musk, and DOGE are trying to skip out on that contract and calling it ‘efficient.’ But it isn’t efficiency— it’s a broken promise to the American people, and Democrats and Republicans alike should stand up and fight back.”

Yeah, sure. This is why they’re Republicans; don’t expect them to fight back. In fact, internal budget documents revealed that Trump is moving to cut $40 billion in health care. Trump “plans to reshape the federal health agencies that oversee food and drug safety, manage the nation’s response to infectious-disease threats and drive biomedical research” with deep debilitating cuts… “Trump and his allies in Congress have made clear they want to smash the status quo by drastically reducing the size of the federal government and scrubbing it of programs and research efforts seen as wasteful or contrary to administration priorities. The administration already has downsized HHS by about one-fourth of its workforce, with about 20,000 departures since Trump took office. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff who worked on programs to prevent drowning and gun violence, improve worker safety and test for sexually transmitted illnesses and hepatitis were among those laid off.”

Yesterday, there were two contradictory reports out of Republicanville related to that. First a report from NBC News that congressional Republicans are re-considering their commitment to tax cuts for the rich. Sahil Kapur and Peter Nicholas wrote that “Republicans are discussing an idea that has long been anathema within the party: a tax hike on the wealthy. In a twist, members of the GOP are debating whether to allow tax rates to go up on top earners when major parts of the 2017 tax law expire at the end of this year… The issue has come up in private meetings among Senate Republicans as they grapple with how to limit the red ink and pay for other provisions of their party-line package, which includes additional funding for immigration enforcement and the military… The prospect of such a momentous shift is driven by a transforming electoral landscape, with Republicans attracting voters with lower incomes and without college degrees, while higher-income and college-educated Americans drift toward Democrats. Voters earning $100,000 or more annually voted for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by a 10-point margin in 2012, but they preferred Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump by 4 points in 2024. Obama won voters who made less than $50,000 per year by 22 points in 2012, while Trump carried them by 2 points last year.

Steve Bannon, a senior White House official during Trump’s first term and an ardent MAGA enthusiast, espoused a populist perspective when it comes to taxation.

In an interview on another topic, Bannon, unprompted, touted higher taxes on the affluent. He said House Speaker Mike Johnson “needs to focus on actually cutting spending dramatically and raising taxes on the wealthy.”

At a town hall event in southeastern Iowa on Tuesday, longtime Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked why Congress isn’t making billionaires pay more in taxes, a question that drew applause and cheers.

“This might surprise you that the list of possibilities we have on our working sheet that the members of the Finance Committee, and I’m a member of that committee, are going to discuss is raising from 37% to 39.6% in that very group of people you talk about,” Grassley replied.

But he added, “Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

It sure doesn’t. And that brings us to the second report, one from Bloomberg where one of Congress’ wealthiest members, Senator David McCormick, shot down the talk about hiking taxes on his people. Alicia Diaz and David Weston wrote that he “predicted a higher tax rate on millionaires won’t fly with the GOP-controlled Congress, throwing cold water on a proposal gaining support in the White House and among some of his fellow lawmakers. ‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen,’ the former Bridgewater Associates chief executive said… McCormick, a newly elected Pennsylvania senator whose roots in the party establishment extend back to a senior role in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department, said Congress should stick to cutting federal spending as it looks for ways to offset tax cuts. ‘We’ve got to reel in the spending,’ McCormick said. ‘That’s going to require some tough choices. But we can’t do that by raising taxes, which slows the economy and hurts working families.’”

McCormick is a big fan of slashing the social safety net for working class Americans so that the very rich can pay less in taxes. “The millionaire’s tax under consideration would add a new tax bracket on top of the current maximum rate of 37% for individuals earning more than $626,350 a year.”