The White Home on Tuesday asserted President Trump wouldn’t reduce Social Safety or Medicare after tech billionaire Elon Musk’s feedback about the necessity to look at entitlement spending gained traction.
Musk, a prime Trump adviser main the hassle to overtake the federal workforce by way of the Division of Authorities Effectivity, appeared on Fox Enterprise Community on Monday for a uncommon tv interview, the place he famous that the majority authorities spending is on entitlements.
“So, the waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the — which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate,” Musk instructed former Trump official Larry Kudlow, suggesting it might quantity to greater than $500 billion in annual financial savings.
A number of media shops reported on Musk’s feedback and indicated the Tesla CEO was speaking about reducing entitlement packages to cut back authorities spending. Such a transfer would set off important political backlash and create fodder for Democrats to go on the assault.
However the White Home pushed again on these experiences, arguing Musk was speaking solely about reducing fraud.
“The Trump Administration is not going to reduce Social Safety, Medicare, or Medicaid advantages,” the White House said in a press release. “President Trump himself has stated it (over and over and over).”
The administration additionally linked to authorities findings of waste and fraud in entitlement packages, together with an August 2024 report from the Social Safety Administration’s Workplace of the Inspector Common that discovered almost $72 billion had been improperly paid.
Trump has repeatedly stated he doesn’t need to reduce Medicare or Social Safety. However he has stated he would search to eliminate fraud in these packages, which critics argue the president and his allies might use as a pretext to chop advantages.
As well as, the nonpartisan Congressional Finances Workplace stated in a report final week that Republicans can’t obtain their objective of slashing $2 trillion in federal spending over the subsequent decade with out reducing Medicaid.
