As Americans celebrate the 89th anniversary of Social Security today, Donald Trump and JD Vance are running to enact a Project 2025 agenda that would gut Social Security. In response, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Social Security has been a lifeline that’s helped millions of Americans retire with dignity for 89 years, but Donald Trump and JD Vance want to put this critical program on the chopping block and leave our seniors out to dry as part of their extreme Project 2025 agenda. Don’t just take it from us — Trump proposed cuts to Social Security every year he was in office while Vance called programs like Social Security one of the ‘biggest roadblocks’ to ‘fiscal sanity.’ The American people won’t let the Trump-Vance ticket leave hardworking Americans out in the cold, and will send Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to the White House to protect seniors’ hard-earned benefits against MAGA Republicans’ dangerous agenda.”

Donald Trump proposed cuts to Social Security in every single one of his budgets as president and has railed against the program for years.

Joe Kernen, CNBC: “Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?”

Trump: “So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.”

Vox: “Trump just opened the door to Social Security cuts. Take him seriously.”

Forbes: “Trump Floats ‘Cutting’ Spending On Entitlements Like Social Security And Medicare”

Rolling Stone: “Trump Floats Cuts to Social Security and Medicare”

CNN: “Trump now says he’s open to entitlement cuts, including Medicare”

“The administration’s fiscal 2020 budget proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security.”

CNN: “Former President Donald Trump once backed raising the retirement age to 70 and called for privatizing Social Security which he called a ‘Ponzi scheme’

“‘We can also raise the age for receipt of full Social Security benefits to seventy,’ he wrote.”

Mediaite: “During a Fox News town hall, President Donald Trump promised to cut entitlements like Medicare and Social Security if he were to win a second term. … ‘But if you don’t cut something in entitlements, you will never really deal with the debt,’ town hall co-moderator Martha MacCallum interjected, alluding to social safety programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. ‘Oh, we’ll be cutting,’ Trump rushed to confirm.”

Washington Post: “His avowed stance, however, is at odds with Trump’s own record as president: Each of his White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.”

Vox: “Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare. His 2020 budget cuts all 3.”

Trump’s FY18, FY19, FY20, and FY21 budgets each proposed billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security programs.

JD Vance called programs like Social Security the “biggest roadblocks” to “fiscal sanity,” said Rick Scott’s budget plan to sunset Social Security had “a lot of good things in it,” and praised Paul Ryan’s budget that included cuts to the program.

Vance: “[Social Security and Medicare] are the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.”

Vance: “The way forward is as obvious as it is politically difficult: … reform current entitlements and avoid enacting new ones.”

Vance: “Tomorrow, Rep. Paul Ryan will release his highly anticipated budget plan. … with serious changes to Social Security and Medicare … I’m hoping that when the dust settles, we’re having a more intelligent conversation about spending cuts than we’ve had during my lifetime.”

Vance: “We’ve got to, frankly, stop spending so much on welfare benefits and start having a lot more workers who are paying into the system.”

HuffPost: “In a 2010 blog post, Vance — then writing under the name J.D. Hamel — argued that Social Security and Medicare were among the biggest drivers of large federal budget deficits, but that neither Democrats nor Republicans had the political will to enact deep cuts to either federal entitlement program.

“‘The political obstacles intimidate more than the practical problems,’ Vance wrote in the post on a personal blog site he used while in law school at Yale. ‘The party of, umm, limited government — the Republican Party — is also the party of the aging white person. The party’s only solid constituency thus depends on the Medicare and Social Security Benefits that are the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity. The Democrats are similarly hopeless.’”

Vance on Rick Scott’s budget to sunset Social Security: “But there are a lot of good things in it. And most importantly, I like that Rick Scott actually proposed a set of ideas for what to do.”

The extremists behind the Trump-Vance ticket’s Project 2025 agenda want to raise the Social Security retirement age and cut Americans’ hard-earned benefits by thousands of dollars each year.

Heritage Foundation: “Should the Social Security Retirement Age Be Raised? Yes.”

Center for American Progress: “Raising the Retirement Age for Social Security Would Cut Benefits by Thousands of Dollars Each Year”

“Far-right plans, endorsed by Project 2025’s authors, to increase the full retirement age would cut benefits for nearly three-quarters of Americans and threaten low- and moderate-income workers with economic insecurity once they leave the workforce.”

Axios: “This is undeniably a Trump-driven operation. The biggest tell: Johnny McEntee — one of Trump’s closest White House aides, and his most fervent internal loyalty enforcer — is a senior adviser to Project 2025. One of the most powerful architects is Stephen Miller, a top West Wing adviser for the Trump administration.”

The Week: “Many of Trump’s indicated plans for a second term fall in line with the Project 2025 outline.”

New York Times: “Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’ This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that ‘the Trump administration … simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.’”

Vance: “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025]. There are some good ideas in there.”