‘They Have to be Adjusted and Fixed’
Austerity only matters when Democrats are in charge.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) signaled this week how Republicans may begin stonewalling and messaging about Democrats should the party succeed in taking back the House this fall.
Buried at the bottom of a Washington Post piece about how the Social Security trust fund will begin running low on money by 2032, an insolvency problem that President Trump’s immigration policies and tax cuts for the wealthy have contributed to, was a quote from Johnson about his supposed plan to cut social services in order to decrease the deficit and, apparently, save the program:
“The reason we are in trouble is because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending,” Johnson reportedly recently told a Louisiana radio station. “That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and then things like Social Security. They have to be adjusted and fixed.”
It is hardly worth pointing out hypocrisy at this point amid Republican leadership’s utter capitulation to the Trump regime, but for posterity’s sake: Johnson was a key figure in ensuring the passage of the first reconciliation package of Trump’s second term — the Big Beautiful Bill that slashed Medicaid funding in order to help offset the impact of making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that that legislation alone will add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. Early CBO estimates show that the immigration enforcement package that Congress just passed via reconciliation (instead of the normal appropriations process) will add another $72 billion to the national debt over 10 years. In Republicans’ eyes, the trillions of dollars that those pieces of legislation will add to the deficit are not a factor in whether or not the legislation should be passed.
But you can all but guarantee that as soon as Democrats are in a position of power again, we will be hearing a lot about how the deficit has ballooned due to social services spending. Blaming Democrats for this newly rediscovered problem will become the party’s Priority No. 1. This may be what Johnson was foreshadowing. Aware of how unpopular it is to talk about making cuts to the social safety net, Johnson also, critically, previewed a plan for Social Security to be “adjusted and fixed” — the details of which we will not know about until, conveniently, after the midterms (and even the vague remarks are already causing issues for members of his conference). Per WaPo:
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) suggested Monday that he would release a plan next year to address ballooning entitlement spending, leading to Democratic attacks.
As Paul Krugman explains in a piece unpacking a recent Social Security Trustees’ report about the solvency of Social Security trust fund, Republicans will likely use these metrics in the future to slash benefits:
But this is a ploy, because while the cost of maintaining Social Security benefits at their promised level isn’t trivial, it is in fact affordable. According to the Trustees’ report, the actuarial balance of OASDI up through 2050 — the amount of additional funds it would need to keep paying full benefits for the next 25 years — is 1.06 percent of GDP. To put that number in perspective, the Trump administration proposes increasing military spending next year by $420 billion, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of GDP – without any discussion of whether that’s affordable.
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So don’t believe Republicans’ gaslighting that it will be necessary to cut Social Security benefits. All that is necessary to preserve Social Security is political will to raise taxes on the wealthy and a sensible immigration policy.
Is Trump Hoping Jay Clayton Will Play a Part in 2020 Retribution?
Before she left as director of national intelligence to help care for her husband, Tulsi Gabbard was intimately involved in various executive branch efforts to unearth something that will help bolster Trump’s beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She was inexplicably present as the FBI raided Fulton County, Georgia, for its election records and materials — and even helped connect President Trump via phone with the agents who conducted the raid. Reporting emerged after the Fulton County raid suggesting that Trump gave Gabbard an outsized role in overseeing the administration’s investigations into the 2020 vote, reportedly because he did not believe his Department of Justice was moving fast enough in doing his bidding.
After Gabbard’s departure, Trump announced that Bill Pulte would serve as acting DNI in her stead. An extreme Trump loyalist with little to no foreign intelligence experience, Pulte’s appointment caused even some members of Republican congressional leadership to express their concerns about what might happen should he be permanently nominated to the post. On Thursday, Trump declared on Truth Social that he was appointing Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the position.
And while he has hedged himself a bit more, at least publicly, when speaking about Trump’s claims of rampant fraud — most recently, Trump is fixated on vote counting in California being slow, and therefore fraudulent (to him) — he has signaled a willingness to fuel various conspiracy theories on that front. Per New York Times:
This week, Mr. Clayton appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and raised concerns about the recent elections in California, after Mr. Trump suggested there had been fraud in the vote.
Mr. Clayton told CNBC earlier this month that the country was “doing an absolutely terrible job” on issues of election integrity, “and the American people are right to question it.” He also questioned California voting laws, including the lack of voter identification.
“I’m not saying that there is fraud,” Mr. Clayton said. “I am saying that the opportunity for fraud makes no sense to me when we can make a much better system.”
Whole States Are RSVP-ing ‘No’ to Trump’s Vanity Bday Bash
Per new reporting out today, from NOTUS:
Days after an exodus of musical acts, officials from Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Oregon told NOTUS they won’t officially send a delegation to the 16-day fair, one of the most high-profile celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday this summer.
In Case You Missed It
The lastest on the Broadview Six from Josh Kovensky: Prosecutors Left, Bogus Cases Collapsed as Boutros Charged Broadview Six
And more, inside Morning Memo today: The Broadview Six Fallout Spreads to Other Cases
New edition of The Franchise, from Khaya Himmelman: A Seasoned Big Liar May Soon be Running Elections in Nevada
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About
What We Are Reading
Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files
These N.Y.C. Tables Are Impossible to Get. Except During a Knicks Game.
Mike Johnson’s Porn-O-Meter is on the blink again as he must be preoccupied with others things, making him more of a wuss and tone deaf than ever. 2026 mid-terms, Go Dems!!
Someone has traced “8647” into the grass on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Let him talk. It’s cheap.
Especially when it is clear the he will soon be ex-SOH, making him even more flaccid than he is now, porn habits or not.
If there’s one grandmother left unstarved, the GOP has given up.
I said earlier and bears repeating:
Any talk of messing with entitlements, especially Social Security, has been a third rail for decades.
I’m wondering if someone other than me can smell the roasting political carcass of the remains of Mike Johnson.
Do they not understand how much of their constituency depends upon SS to survive retirement?