Trump/DeSantis and the Social Security Neighborhood of Make Believe

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You remember Mr. Rogers and he had his little choo train in the back there and he would go to the neighborhood of make believe King Friday was in charge of the neighborhood. Make remember that. Well, let me tell you, uh, you’ve got Ron DeSantis and his buddy, Donald Trump, and they’re riding the choo train to the social security neighborhood of make believe I touched on this yesterday in the podcast in regards to, um,

the debate and I have to continue with this. Again, Donald Trump wasn’t there at the debate, but I don’t know, maybe he was living rent free in Ron Sanis’s mind. Again, one of the most important issues facing the country right now is obviously fiscal issues and one of our biggest problems when it comes to fiscal issues is entitlement spending. And

You know, it’s hard for me and I’ve been a supporter of Ron DeSantis. And I said this is why it was like a punch in the gut. It really was. It was like a punch in the gut for me. How do I how do I support how do you support somebody that is completely ignoring. One of the biggest issues facing this country right now, debt deficits, and obviously the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room is entitlement spending.

in the same way that I would say to any Donald Trump supporter out there. How do you support someone who is ignoring one of the biggest issues of our day? How do you do that? Again, I. Maybe maybe some of you people that are big time Trump supporters again. I’d love to hear from you. I love the Senate. Send me an email. Send me a message. I want to know.

I want I just want to get your line of thinking on how you can go about ignoring an issue that is that important. Do you not believe? You don’t believe that we’re having massive fiscal issues in this country. Do you not believe what’s going on? You don’t believe the fact that Social Security is going to be cut in 10 years. Medicare in eight years? Anyway, um, this was its past spring. Trump being Trump. Went after.

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DeSantis for supporting, this is back when Paul Ryan was basically pushing for entitlement reforms in Congress. You remember at the time Democrats were running, Democrats were running commercials and I was beside myself with anger of Paul Ryan pushing grandma off a cliff in a wheelchair. Essentially, essentially Donald Trump.

was doing the same thing. And he’s doing the same thing right now. He’s basically taking a page from the Democrats and saying, you know, Republicans are gonna take it. They’re gonna rip your social security away from you. Yeah, and I quote, “‘DeSantis is colluding with his globalist handlers.'” Does Trump even know what that means? “‘To go full Never Trump in order to gaslight the people “‘into thinking that Medicare and Social Security

should be ripped away from hard working Americans. That was coming from the Trump campaign. And again, I understand it’s politics. I swear, I probably could never run for office. I could never lie like this for political gain. Okay, I couldn’t do it. I know it’s Donald Trump for crying out loud. And he doesn’t have any problem with that. Mind you, 20 years ago.

20 years ago? What was 20 years ago? Think about it. Where were we 20? George W. Bush was trying to reform social security. And guess who supported it? Guess who came out all for it? Oh yeah, that same guy, that same guy, the orange man, Donald Trump was for it. He wanted back then he supported raising the retirement age to 70 and creating private retirement accounts. But now nothing.

Not even a tiny change, not even modest change. Again, most of the candidates on the stage there at the debate that kind of bobbed and weaved outside of Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, who are most certainly heading in the right direction. Again, right now, okay, the Social Security spending, okay, was $1.3 trillion last year.

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$1.3 trillion. We also had a trillion dollars in interest payments as well. When presented with this, Ron DeSantis said, I haven’t raised the retirement age. Well, life expectancy is falling, so I don’t see how we could go ahead and do that. Yeah, life expectancy fell because of COVID and it also is falling because of, like I’ve said before, because of the drug use and the fact that we’re losing over 100,000 people a year.

due to drugs and that’s a major problem as well. It has no impact whatsoever, no bearing whatsoever on longevity for senior citizens. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. Nada. You hit the age of 65 right now. You can expect to live almost another 20 years.

19.6. 19.6, you know what it was in 1980? It was 16.4.

It was 16.4 in 1980, it’s now almost 20 years. Since social security reform happened, this is Ronald Reagan, Tip O’Neill, early 1980s, the retirement age has increased by two years. Right now, okay, you wanna take a look at it, okay? If we were to basically, you’re basically to use life expectancy as a gauge on when you should receive it.

When Social Security was created in 1935, life expectancy was 61.7 years. 61.7 years, 1935. If we were to index that based upon where life expectancy is today, retirement age would be at 80.

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It’s the equivalent, okay? This making sense to you? It’s the equivalent of having a retirement age at 80 and no one is even coming close to suggesting that. But this neighborhood of make believe, this idea that we’re gonna live in denial and not solve this problem. To me, that doesn’t show much leadership. I mean.

Yeah, do you have to frame issues the right way? Are you going to be attacked? Are they going to be running ads after? You have to set this up as just, you know what? We’re going to either fix this or, I mean, you could make, you could be apocalyptic because again, for many people that are ill-prepared, it’s going to hurt. And it’s going to hurt big time. And I’ve seen it firsthand in Europe. I’ve seen it firsthand in Europe. You only realize the massive cuts, massive cuts. Again, people there have got.

conditioned to retiring at an early age in many of these countries, retiring at an early age and getting these very generous payment packages from the government. They had the financial crisis in many of the Mediterranean countries 2010. Those retirement benefits were cut to the bone and here we are, you know, those countries are doing much better. You’re still 13 years later. They haven’t gone back.

It’s gonna be a smack upside the head of a lot of people and quite frankly, it’s not necessary. It’s something that could be fixed. Again, need a little leadership though. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.