Republicans are publicly discussing the prospect of making cuts to mandatory spending programs, which could include programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security benefits are paid to millions of Americans on a monthly basis, and helps form the bedrock of income for retirees, survivors of deceased claimants and disabled people. An estimated 53 million retirees -- roughly 16 percent of the population -- were collecting monthly payments at the end of 2024.
Republican members of Congress are working on a major reconciliation bill that would renew or expand key elements of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a landmark piece of legislation from Donald Trump's first presidency. The TJCA, which lowered corporate, individual, and estate taxes, contains numerous provisions currently set to expire at the end of 2025. The Treasury Office of Tax Analysis estimates that extending these tax cuts could add up to $5 trillion.
Funded by a combination of taxes and trust funds, Social Security is by far the largest direct expense of the U.S. government's annual budget, amounting to $1.3 trillion, or 5 percent of GDP, in 2023. It pays out benefits to more than 70 million retirees, disabled people and relatives or dependents of deceased workers every year.
West Virginia Representative Riley Moore confirmed that Republicans have been "discussing" cutting mandatory spending -- that is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans benefits -- in order to pass Trump's tax cut agenda.
Moore said "the unified government" has an opportunity "to actually address mandatory spending." Mandatory spending is the part of a government's budget that is legally required to be spent, and includes funding for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security and other payments to people, businesses, and state and local governments.
Speaking on Fox Business, Moore said: "Mandatory spending is the biggest driver of the debt in this country and we have to address that."
Newsweek has contacted Moore's office for comment via the contact form on his website.
However, his comments are at odds with President Donald Trump's promise not to cut Social Security in any capacity, which he promised during his 2024 presidential campaign.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has also pledged there will be no cuts to Social Security to fund the Republican fiscal agenda, saying in January that "the president has made clear that Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved."
In an interview with Breitbart on March 13, 2024, Trump said: "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare. We'll have to do it elsewhere. But we're not going to do anything to hurt them."
"There's so many things we can do," Trump said. "There's so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I'll never do anything to hurt Social Security."
Speaker Mike Johnson said on January 7: "No one is coming in with the intention of cutting benefits in any way or anything, but we have to look at all spending and look at it very deliberately while maintaining those commitments."
A wholesale cut to Social Security benefits is unlikely as -- despite its $1.5 trillion annual cost -- it is extremely popular with the American electorate. However, Trump's plans to nix federal income taxes on Social Security income -- which is paid by some 40 percent of beneficiaries -- could bring forward a funding cliff edge that would see benefits cut by around 20 percent automatically in 2034.