Joe Biden and Donald Trump are bizarrely on the same page on the top issue so far in the 2024 White House race, as they aim huge, possibly campaign-defining swings at Republicans who they claim will shred retirement benefits.
The current and former presidents – bitter rivals who agree on little else – are both forcing their foes into political retreats and attempts to whitewash past support for changes that could cut Medicare and Social Security payouts.
Their strategy is reinforcing a truism of presidential election campaigns that candidates who even entertain the notion of “reforming” these cherished entitlement programs for seniors are playing with fire.
With typical bluntness, Trump has blasted his potential top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as a “wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy” after he voted, as a member of the US House, for non-binding resolutions that would have raised the age at which most seniors can collect their benefits to 70. As a 2012 congressional candidate, he supported privatizing Social Security, CNN’s KFile has reported. But trying to ease his vulnerability on the issue, DeSantis insisted in a Fox News interview last week: “We’re not going to mess with Social Security.”
Despite his own proposed cuts to these programs as president, Trump has kept up the attacks. “We’re not going back to people that want to destroy our great Social Security system – even some in our own party; I wonder who that might be – who want to raise the minimum age of Social Security to 70, 75 or even 80 in some cases, and who are out to cut Medicare to a level that will be unrecognizable,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday.
A few days later, another Republican hopeful gave both Biden and Trump a new opening to exploit.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was forced to…
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