Happy Monday! Former President Donald Trump campaigned in North Carolina today while Vice President Kamala Harris is holding events with former Rep. Liz Cheney in the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, continuing her efforts to appeal to Republicans.
Here’s what you should know.
Trump’s Plans Would Speed Social Security Insolvency: Analysis
Social Security will be forced to cut benefits by an estimated 23% in 10 years if Congress fails to prop up the program’s trust funds before then, but a new analysis from a budget watchdog group warns that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposals would move up the day of reckoning by as much as three years while forcing an even larger benefit reduction.
The report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for debt and deficit reduction, found that several of Trump’s proposals would widen Social Security’s projected financial shortfall. Ending taxes on Social Security benefits would reduce the program’s cash balance by an estimated $950 billion between 2026 and 2035. Eliminating federal income taxes on tips and overtime income would cost about $900 billion over the same time period, while the combination of more restrictive immigration rules, which would reduce the number of migrant workers paying into the system, and higher tariffs, which would increase the cost of many goods and thereby increase annual cost-of-living adjustments, would cost about $400 billion.
Altogether, the proposals would reduce the cash balance in the Social Security system by roughly $2.3 trillion over a decade, according to the group’s "central estimate" of the effects of Trump’s plans. (The "low" estimate for the revenue loss is $1.3 trillion over 10 years, while the "high" estimate is $2.8 trillion.)
As a result, the Social Security system would be forced to cut benefits in fiscal year 2031 rather than in 2034, as currently projected. "In other words," the group said, "the trust funds would be insolvent only six years after the next President takes office instead of nine – reducing the remaining life of the trust fund by one-third."
Additionally, the size of the benefit cut would increase under Trump’s proposals. The current projected 23% cut — roughly $16,500 a year for a typical dual-income household — would become a 33% cut by 2035.
No plans to bolster Social Security on the table: Neither presidential candidate has offered a plan to improve Social Security’s long-term financial health and avoid the projected benefit cuts. The CRFB analysts did note, however, that Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposals would not have a significant negative effect on the Social Security trust funds.
Harris campaign spokesperson Joe Costello told CBS News that the analysis shows that Trump is a threat to the Social Security system, while the Democratic candidate seeks to safeguard it. "Vice President Harris is committed to protecting Social Security benefits and is the only candidate who will actually fight for seniors, not just pay them lip service on the campaign trail," Costello said.
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt rejected the CRFB analysis altogether while arguing without basis that undocumented immigrants are a serious threat to the Social Security system. "The so-called experts at CRFB have been consistently wrong throughout the years," Leavitt said in a statement. "By unleashing American energy, slashing job-killing regulations, and adopting pro-growth America First tax and trade policies, President Trump will quickly rebuild the greatest economy in history and put Social Security on a stronger footing for generations to come," she said.
In its analysis, CRFB addressed Trump’s argument about the curative power of energy production, saying, "increased energy exploration is unlikely to have a meaningful effect on Social Security." And while faster economic growth could indeed help Social Security’s finances, CRFB was skeptical about the potential for Trump’s plans to do so. "[B]ased on available analyses and understanding the effects of President Trump’s agenda on the national debt, it is unlikely his plans would significantly boost the size of the economy, and many estimates find his plans would reduce long-term output," CRFB said.
Trump Says Congress Should Reconvene to Deliver More Disaster Relief
We’re down to the final two weeks of the presidential campaign and what was already one of the closest, most tumultuous races in U.S. history is getting even wilder.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday toured damage from Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina, and told reporters afterward that he would favor having congressional lawmakers return from their election recess to deliver more disaster relief funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "This is a very unusual situation, and I would be in favor of it," Trump said.
FEMA has said it has enough funding to respond to the one-two punch delivered in the southeastern United States by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. President Joe Biden has called on Congress to restore funding that ran out for a Small Business Administration disaster loan program and has warned that FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund faces a shortfall at the end of the year. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said it is too soon for lawmakers to provide more funding, saying that states still have to fully evaluate their needs.
Trump’s visit to North Carolina followed a staged publicity event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday and some crude remarks about the late golf legend Arnold Palmer’s genitalia at a rally on Saturday that also veered into profanity about Vice President Kamala Harris.
After touring storm damage, the Republican presidential nominee criticized the federal response to Helene and North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. He promised to slash through the bureaucracy and bring prosperity to the region if elected to another term. And he again falsely claimed that FEMA didn’t have the necessary funding because money had been diverted to migrant shelters, calling the agency’s response "a disgrace."
"They had spent hundreds of millions of dollars doing other things, things that I don’t think bear any relationship to this money," Trump. "They were not supposed to be spending the money on taking in illegal migrants, maybe so they could vote in the election. Because that’s — a lot of people are saying that’s why they’re doing it. I don’t know, I hope that’s not why they’re doing it."
FEMA has separate programs and separate funding for disaster relief and sheltering migrants. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre warned Monday that Trump’s misinformation is "dangerous."
At a rally later in the day in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump criticized Harris, focusing much of his speech on immigration, which he said was a more important issue than the economy. He promoted a baseless conspiracy theory by suggesting that Harris and Democrats had allowed illegal immigrants to enter the country so they could vote and repeated his promise to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to launch "the largest deportation program" ever. "Think of that, 1798," he said. "That’s when we had real politicians that said we’re not going to play games. We have to go back to 1798."
An end to federal income taxes? In a pre-taped appearance at a New York City barbershop that aired on Fox News on Monday morning, Trump was asked if there would be a way to eliminate federal taxes once the country "is back on its feet" and generating enough revenue to pay off its debt.
It was, frankly, a preposterous question based on a false premise, but Trump answered in the affirmative, again pointed to his tariff plans and harkened back to a much different time in U.S. history, repeating his glorification of the 1890s and President William McKinley, who took office in 1897.
"There is a way," Trump said. "You know, in the old days, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s — this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn't have an income tax."
What the country did have back then was a deep economic depression from 1893 to 1897 and high tariffs, enacted in 1890, that were massively unpopular and led to a political drubbing for Republicans.
Fiscal News Roundup
- Trump Proposals Could Drain Social Security in 6 Years, Budget Group Says – Washington Post
- Trump’s Plans Set Social Security Benefits Up for 33% Cut, Watchdog Warns – Bloomberg
- Trump Bashes FEMA, NC Governor as He Tours Helene Storm Damage – The Hill
- Trump Backs Congress Returning From Recess to Pass Hurricane Relief – The Hill
- Harris Hits Trump Over Minimum Wage After McDonald’s Stop – Bloomberg
- Liz Cheney Helps Harris Seek Moderate Votes as They Paint Trump as a Dangerous Choice – Associated Press
- Trump Tariff Proposals ‘a Complete Disaster’ for US Manufacturing, Colorado Governor Says – Semafor
- Most Voters Think the Economy Is Poor, but Split on Whether Trump or Harris Can Fix It: AP-NORC Poll – Associated Press
- Biden Administration Extends Repayment Freeze for 8 Million Student Loan Borrowers – CBS News
- Trump Advisers Discussed Demoting a Fed Official — and It’s Not Powell – Washington Post
- Harris Raises $633 Million in the Third Quarter but Spends Heavily in Final Push – Associated Press
- Elon Musk's $1 Million Election Giveaway Tests Limits of Election Law – Reuters
- Housing Costs Are Rising Everywhere — but Especially in Swing States – Washington Post
- As Harris Courts Sun Belt, Housing Costs Stand in Her Way – New York Times
- Biden Administration Proposes a Rule to Make Over-the-Counter Birth Control Free – NPR
- Covid Money Boosted Chicago’s Schools. Now It’s Gone, and the City Is in Crisis – Washington Post
- U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them – New York Times
Views and Analysis
- Trump’s Recent Four Pinocchio Flights of Fancy – Glenn Kessler, Washington Post
- Trump’s Wild and Lewd Rhetoric Reaches a New Extreme – Stephen Collinson, CNN
- Why Four Long-Shot Senate Races Could Be Competitive – Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell, Washington Post
- Trump’s Tariffs Appeal to Voters. Don’t Be Fooled – Bill Dudley, Bloomberg
- Trump's Trade Rhetoric May Not Be All Bluster. He Needs Mammoth Tariffs to Pay for Everything Else He Wants – Ben Werschkul, Yahoo Finance
- How Kamala Harris Should Put America First — for Real – Stephen Wertheim, New York Times
- People Keep Making These Six Mistakes About Inflation – Peter Coy, New York Times
- The Music Man: Trump’s Kitschy Nostalgia Is the Point – Sam Adler-Bell, New York
- The Insurrationalizers: The Wall Street Journal Plumps for Trump – Jonathan Chait, New York
- An ‘Obamacare’ for Homeowners Insurance Could Protect Against Climate Change – Daniel Schwarcz, The Hill
- Inside the Republican Drama Over Mitch McConnell’s Successor – Burgess Everett, Semafor