Nikki Haley grabbed hold of a third rail in American politics last week when she plainly stated that it is "unrealistic to say you're not going to touch entitlements."
The 2024 presidential hopeful floated the idea of raising the retirement age for younger Americans in order to preserve Social Security and Medicare benefits.
"The first thing you do is you change the retirement age of the young people coming up so that we can try and have some sort of system for them," Haley said during a campaign stop in Iowa last week. "It's the new ones coming in. It's those in their 20s that are coming in. You're coming to them and you're saying, 'The game has changed. We're going to do this completely differently.'"
Patrick Hynes, a longtime GOP political operative, told me entitlement programs will likely be a major wedge issue between former president Donald Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 race. Trump could use the issue "as a bludgeon" against possible competitors, including Haley, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and former vice president Mike Pence.
Trump's advisers reportedly believe DeSantis's track record of voting to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare as a congressman is ripe for criticism, per the Washington Examiner. DeSantis voted for three nonbinding resolutions between 2013 and 2015 that called for raising the retirement age to 70 and reducing benefits for millions of earners.
The governor seemed to walk back his previous support for raising the retirement age as well as privatizing Social Security earlier this month. "We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans," he told Fox News. "I think that that's pretty clear."
Pence, like Haley, has suggested that reforms to Social Security and Medicare must be "on the table" when it comes to the debt ceiling.
Trump, for his part, called on Republican lawmakers not to "cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security" when they began negotiations with President Biden and Democrats over a measure to raise the debt ceiling in January.
"Cut waste, fraud, and abuse everywhere that we can find it, and there is plenty of it. . . . But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security. Don't destroy it," Trump said at the time.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign told me he "believes that the debate between tax increases and spending cuts as a way to handle national debt is misguided because it leaves out the most important lever we should be focused on: driving GDP growth."
The campaign added, however: "To the extent entitlement reform is required in the future, Vivek favors drawing distinctions in certain instances for 'safety net' programs between those who have earned $10 million over their lifetime versus those who have not — and to make any changes prospectively in advance so that no Americans who have paid into a system and were promised one thing end up being deprived of what they were promised."
Hynes said while Haley's approach is reasonable, it is "very easy to demagogue entitlement reform."
"She's going to have to run around and explain why critics of her ideas are wrong and [are] mischaracterizing what she's talking about," he said. "And the old adage in politics is, 'If you're explaining, you're losing.'"
She deserves credit for "stepping in boldly," he said, "but it is a very dangerous position to hold and one that has never been successful for any politician."
A YouGov poll in January found that Democrats and Republicans both view Social Security and Medicare more favorably than not. Eighty-nine percent of Americans who personally receive Social Security benefits have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the program, while 84 percent of Medicare benefit recipients said the same.
While, politically speaking, there is no downside to Trump's "don't touch the programs at all" approach, the downside, Hynes says, "is reality."
"If he [is] the next president, in all probability the insolvency would happen after he left office, but the fact is our safety net is underfunded and without reforms we're talking about insolvency. But that's a very, very difficult thing to explain to voters."
Especially in the early primary state of New Hampshire, which has one of the oldest populations in the country: 19.3 percent of the state's population was age 65 or older in 2020.
"Running as an entitlement-reform candidate is going to be very problematic, it's going to be a barrier to earning the votes of a lot of senior Republican primary voters," said Hynes, who is New Hampshire–based. "Even though the proposals have nothing to do with current or near-term beneficiaries."
Joe Lakin, a senior consultant with Victory Enterprises, which has extensive involvement in Iowa, noted that the Iowa Republican caucus also skews significantly more rural and older than typical general elections and even other primaries. In Iowa, 17.9 percent of the population was older than 65 in 2020.
Lakin suggests the prospect of entitlement reform could be a mixed bag with Iowans, because while such a discussion is likely to be unpopular with the "much older electorate," the typical Iowa caucus-goer is an "incredibly studious voter who takes their role in the process incredibly seriously." As a result, he said, "I don't think it's going to be a slash-and-burn typical political issue."
"I think voters will understand [that] by doing nothing, you're also changing these programs," he added. "Long-term, they're unsustainable in their current makeup and particularly with federal spending the way it is. I think voters, certainly older voters in Iowa, care about Medicare, Social Security, but I also think they're going to recognize that a discussion about federal spending has to be had, and this certainly has to be a part of that."
But he acknowledged that "it's probably always going to be the safer position to say we're not going to do anything."
Entitlement reform was not the only point of contention to emerge among the 2024 candidates and likely contenders recently. In response to a questionnaire on the issue from Fox News' Tucker Carlson, DeSantis broke with many of the other 2024 hopefuls, downplaying America's national interest in what he referred to as a "territorial dispute."
"While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them," the governor said.
DeSantis suggested the Biden administration's "virtual 'blank-check' funding of this conflict for 'as long as it takes,' without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country's most pressing challenges."
Trump suggested Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he were still in office and that he would be able to broker a deal between the two countries if he were elected for another term. He also criticized the disproportionate amount of aid the U.S. has sent Ukraine compared to Europe.
Haley argued that opposing Russia in Ukraine is in fact a vital American national strategic interest. In explaining why opposing Russia is a vital interest, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said: "America is far better off with a Ukrainian victory than a Russian victory, including avoiding a wider war," she concluded. "If Russia wins, there is no reason to believe it will stop at Ukraine. And if Russia wins, then its closest allies, China and Iran, will become more aggressive."
As DeSantis increasingly wades into various national debates, Ken Cuccinelli is kicking off a tour of the early primary states this week to meet with voters and discuss why the Florida governor should run in 2024. Cuccinelli, who previously served as the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, announced the launch of the Never Back Down PAC last week to urge DeSantis to run for president in 2024.
On Wednesday, DeSantis notched a key endorsement from Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Roy, who was once a Trump ally, said it is "time for a new generation of leadership" and called for "younger, but proven, leadership."
"It's time for Ron DeSantis to be President of the United States," he said.
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