Perdue’s Plan to Put Earned Benefits Programs on the Chopping Block Gets More Support from White House

After already stacking nearly $2 trillion onto the national debt, Perdue and his White House allies are still threatening earned benefits programs in the middle of a global pandemic

ATLANTA — This weekend, a new report revealed that White House advisors are considering plans for “curbing” Social Security benefits in response to the coronavirus outbreak, threatening a vital program for older Georgians — and one that Senator David Perdue has repeatedly tried to put on the chopping block.

This is not the first time the White House and Perdue have tried to put these critical programs at risk. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump backed calls to put earned benefits on the table for cuts after releasing a budget that proposed cutting nearly $2 trillion from programs like Medicare and Medicaid and billions from Social Security. And Perdue has previously railed against critical earned benefits, saying spending on programs like “Social Security and Medicare” is “the problem” and blaming them for “causing this debt.”

But even as Republicans criticize these programs, neither Perdue nor the White House had any problem supporting a deficit-busting corporate tax giveaway that added nearly $2 trillion to the national debt — and did even more damage to these earned benefit programs as it “trimmed a year of solvency from the primary Medicare trust fund and had a negative effect on the Social Security trust fund.” Yet as older Americans face elevated risks in the coronavirus outbreak, Perdue and the White House clearly have no intention of backing down from their reckless plans to put earned benefits programs on the chopping block.

“The last thing older Georgians should have to worry about in the middle of a public health crisis is attacks on vital earned benefits programs like Social Security. But Senator David Perdue and his White House allies would rather chip away at these critical programs than look out for Georgia families,” said Alex Floyd, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia.

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