Photo: Alamy
During a Sunday interview on NBC, President Donald Trump reassured the American public that his administration would not be pushing for any cuts to Social Security.
Anchor Kristen Welker remarked, “The President-elect is tasking Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, to try to cut government spending along with one of Mr. Trump’s former primarily rivals, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all of it putting a spotlight on what it could mean for entitlements and defense spending.”
She then said to Trump, “You’ve tapped Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, to head out this Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which proposes cuts to the federal government. I think a lot of people hear that and get concerned about Medicare and Social Security.”
Trump made clear that DOGE would not “have anything to do with that,” as Welker pressed, “You won’t touch Medicare, Social Security?”
Trump said, “We are talking about Theft, abuse, fraud. I said, no, we’re not talking Social Security, other than we make it more efficient, but the people will get what they getting.”
Welker responded with, “So entitlements, off the table.” Trump immediately remarked, “And we’re not raising ages or any of that stuff,” adding, “I won’t do it.”
Democrats spent years claiming that Republicans were planning to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. President Trump campaigned on the promise that he would not touch either program.
Trump believes that cutting wasteful spending in many other areas of the federal government is the ticket to reviving the American dream.
DOGE is already hard at work assessing where the most cuts need to be made. In the last week, DOGE has highlighted the cost of illegal immigration, which was $150.7 billion in 2023, the wasteful programs headed up by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and foreign aid.
DOGE also recently highlighted how overregulation impedes American innovation. In a post on X, the future department wrote, “America once prided itself in building great projects; now, those projects are hampered by bureaucracy and overregulation.”
The post listed various projects that took decades to complete due to overregulation. DOGE has not mentioned making any changes to Social Security or Medicare.
