Robert Reich: Trump's Coming After Medicare and Social Security Next

This article first appeared on

Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they've created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

As House Speaker Paul Ryan says "We're going to have to get… at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit."

Don't let them get away with it.


Before they existed, Americans faced grim prospects. In 1935, the year Social Security was enacted, roughly half of America's seniors lived in poverty. By the 1960s poverty among seniors had dropped significantly, but medical costs were still a major financial burden and only half of Americans aged 65 and over had health insurance. Medicare fixed that, guaranteeing health care for older Americans.


Retirees play dice in Bonita Springs, Florida, on September 9, 2017. Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty

Medicaid is also a vital lifeline for America's elderly and the poor. Yet the Trump administration has already started whittling it away by encouraging states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

Republicans like to call these programs "entitlements," as if they're some kind of giveaway. But Americans pay into Social Security and Medicare throughout their entire working lives. It's Americans' own money they're getting back through these programs.



Currently, top earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $120,000 of their yearly income. So the rich end up, in effect, paying a lower Social Security tax rate than everyone else. Lifting the ceiling on what wealthy Americans contribute would help pay for the Baby Boomers retirements and leave Social Security in good shape for Millennials.


As the nation's largest insurer, Medicare has tremendous bargaining power. Why should Americans pay far more for drugs than people in any other country?



We need to not just secure, but revitalize Social Security and these other programs for our children, and for our children's children. Millennials just overtook Baby Boomers as our nation's largest demographic.


Robert Reich is the chancellor's professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, and Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He has written 14 books, including the best-sellers Aftershock, The Work of Nations and Beyond Outrage and, most recently, Saving Capitalism. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-creator of the award-winning documentary Inequality for All.

Robert Reich: Trump's Coming After Medicare and Social Security Next | Opinion