A regular exercise that Democrats engage in every four years is to claim that Republicans are going to end Medicare and/or Social Security. This was a big item during the 2000 election campaign of Bush vs Gore. The Bush campaign was talking about privatizing some aspects of Social Security. There never was any intent to end or even reduce Social Security. None of these claims of ending Social Security were true. The Democrats were just trying to scare older citizens into voting Democratic.
In every presidential election cycle since then, the Democrats have hammered at this theme even though absolutely nothing about the Republican platforms have suggested taking away or reducing Social Security and/or Medicare benefits.
Has either party actually worked to reduce benefits or included such ideas in their platforms?
Joe Biden has been at the forefront of reducing the amount of money that senior citizens receive via Social Security. Prior to 1983 Social Security was not taxed. Biden supported and voted for a change where 50% of Social Security benefits became taxable.
In 1993, Joe Biden doubled down and was the deciding vote in raising the percentage of Social Security taxed from 50% to 85%. So, Biden and his fellow elite Democrats have been waging a stealth campaign to get people to forget that the Democrats have been the ones to reduce Social Security benefits to senior citizens.
What is the situation this election cycle? PDJT has suspended the payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare until the end of the year. The Democrats are running campaign ads claiming that Social Security will run out of money by 2023 because of this. This is just a flat out lie. Again they are trying to scare older people.
How about the Democratic platform for this election cycle? Are they supporting anything that affects senior citizens’ income? Do such suggested changes help or hurt such income?
One such change proposed by Biden has been to change how IRA’s are funded. While there may be some benefit to lower income families, most of the middle class would wind up paying more in taxes when they try to save for their retirement. This puts the lie to Biden’s claim that he would not raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000.
Biden has also stated publicly that if you benefitted from the Trump tax cuts, you will see your taxes raised by him. This statement was met with a somewhat underwhelming response. See the video.
In particular, Biden has proposed raising the capital gains tax to the level of ordinary income while at the same time returning those rates to pre-Trump levels. Obviously this would raise taxes on senior citizens who have money invested in portfolios. Biden’s plan would raise taxes on most Americans. The only clear winners here would be the wealthiest of Americans who would benefit from getting back some local and state tax deductions that disappeared in the Trump tax cut. So, Biden’s tax plan would only benefit the wealthiest. Isn’t this what the Democrats always claim about Republican tax plans?
Keep in mind that various studies have shown that the Democratic plans are to raise taxes by an estimated $4 trillion dollars. Anyone who seriously thinks that this would not fall on America’s senior citizens has been smoking mind-altering substances. All of their plans are a stealth attack on the incomes of most Americans.