Mike Pompeo Welcomes the Looming Social Security Debate – By Philip Wegmann (Real Clear Politics) / Mar 3, 2023
Two words are enough to scare most Republican politicians these days: Entitlement reform.
Or, rather, it’s the way Republican opponents interpret that phrase. After telling voters that the GOP want to (among other things) “end Social Security and Medicare” altogether, Democrats coasted to a historic showing in the midterm elections. Afterward, they didn’t let up. In his State of the Union address, President Biden repeated the charge, and other White House officials kept accusing Kevin McCarthy of trying to cut those programs as part of the debt ceiling negotiations – until the new House Speaker declared them “completely off the table.” Borrowing from Biden’s playbook, Donald Trump recently dubbed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “a wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy.”
Reconciling actuarial tables with government’s longtime pledge to the elderly isn’t the sexiest topic in politics, but arguments over austerity win and lose elections, and now the old Tea Party orthodoxies have come back to haunt plenty of the Republican politicians who once spouted them to win power. Just not Mike Pompeo.
