Just over 24 hours after threatening to cut Social Security at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of global elites in Davos, President Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to “save” the New Deal-era program from supposed Democratic efforts to “destroy” it—prompting Sen. Bernie Sanders to accuse the president of peddling “more lies.”
“Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!”
Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate and long-time advocate of Social Security expansion, responded by pointing in a tweet to Trump’s 2020 budget proposal, which called for $25 billion in cuts to Social Security and trillions more in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
In a separate tweet late Thursday, Sanders posted a video contrasting the president’s comments at Davos with then-candidate Trump’s pledge in 2015 to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from cuts backed by Republicans in Congress.
“As a candidate, Trump said he’d protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” Sanders wrote. “Now he has an obligation to tell the American people: ‘I was lying. It was all just a campaign ruse.'”
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the Trump administration is currently pursuing changes to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that, if implemented, could terminate crucial benefits for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.
The public comment period on the administration’s proposed rule change—which would make it more difficult for people with disabilities and other serious ailments to receive Social Security payments—ends Jan. 31. Comments can be left here.
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