(PresidentialDaily.org) – Former President Donald Trump has a lot of confidence in his ability to win back the White House in the 2024 presidential election.
He pushes forward on policies that he believes in, taking many traditional conservative stances a step or two further. But, there are two hot-button issues that Trump believes will help vault him into the White House again – Social Security and Medicare.
If Trump is right about this, it would be because he took a stance on those two major issues that doesn’t fall in line with many other Republicans. While many members of the GOP have been targeting the two programs as a way to reduce federal spending, Trump has sent out warnings to them that it would be a bad idea.
Politico recently reported that:
“[Trump’s] attacks on potential GOP primary opponents, and his warning to party leaders to stay away from the popular entitlement programs in their push to cut spending, are cleaving Republicans at every level. Lawmakers who once backed entitlement overhauls are now openly at odds with colleagues who’d prefer to soften their positions before they face voters in 2024.”
Many establishment Republicans believe that Social Security and Medicare are two programs that need to either be overhauled, cut or reduced in some way so that they can reduce overall spending by the federal government, while also helping to lower taxes and balance the federal budget.
Trump is taking the opposite stance, though. He believes in preserving these entitlement programs.
The former president has taken to attacking his potential GOP primary opponents on these issues already. In referencing votes that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made while he was a member of the House of Representatives, Trump said the governor is a “wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy.” DeSantis consistently voted to gradually raise the eligibility age for Medicare.
Trump also took aim at Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the UN during the Trump administration who has officially announced her candidacy for president. The former president referred back to comments Haley made about 10 years ago in which she said that certain entitlement programs should be up for discussion so that the federal government could remain small.
He even went after his own former vice president, Mike Pence, who has said that the entitlement programs should be “on the table in the long term.”
Trump may enjoy the fact that these comments are helping him personally, but they’re certainly not making other members of the GOP happy.
That is something that Senator Chuck Grassley referred to recently when he said:
“It got [Trump] elected the first time, and I think it will get him elected the second time, but it doesn’t do anything for our children and grandchildren that aren’t going to have a program that I’m enjoying right now.”
Senator Mike Rounds, who sits on a working group in the upper chamber about entitlements, added:
“We need an adult as president who is going to take on the tough challenges, the tough problems and be prepared to share with the American people how serious it is. That we use facts and not scare tactics.”
