President Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump on Monday after the former president suggested in an interview that he is open to cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the federal deficit.
“Many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security and Medicare back on the chopping block again. If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them. Working people built this country,” Biden told supporters in New Hampshire, according to The Hill.
“Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table again,” Biden continued. “The bottom line is, he’s still at it. I’m never gonna allow that to happen. I won’t cut Social Security. I won’t cut Medicare.”
In an interview with CNBC, Trump was asked how he plans to handle entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to tackle the national debt.
“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump said. “And in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements — there’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
Trump did not say what specific actions he would take to reform the programs, and his campaign rushed to clarify his remarks, claiming he was “clearly talking about cutting waste, not entitlements.”
But as president, Trump’s budget proposals included spending cuts to Social Security, by targeting disability benefits, and Medicare, by reducing provider payments.
