The White House on Tuesday argued that President Trump would not cut Social Security or Medicare after comments from tech billionaire Elon Musk and the need to look into the traction that eligibility spending has been obtained.
Musk, a top Trump advisor, led an effort to overhaul the federal workforce and appeared on Monday on Fox Business Network for a rare television interview.
“So waste and fraud in eligibility spending, it's all. This is most of most federal spending. Musk told former Trump civil servant Larry Kudrow, who suggested that his savings could be more than $500 billion a year.
Multiple media It has been reported Musk's comments showed Tesla's CEO was talking about cutting qualification programs to reduce government spending. Such a move will create serious political backlash and create feed for Democrats to launch attacks.
However, the White House pushed back those reports and insisted that Musk was only talking about cutting fraud.
“The Trump administration will not cut social security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits,” the White House said. press release. “President Trump himself said that (and again and again),” the White House said in a press release. ”
The administration also links government findings of waste and fraud in its qualification programme. August 2024 Report From the Social Security Office inspector's office, which discovered that nearly $72 billion had been paid inappropriately.
Trump has repeatedly said he doesn't want to cut Medicare or Social Security. However, he said he would try to remove fraud with those programs, and critics argued that the president and his allies could use it as an excuse.
Additionally, the Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in a report last week that Republicans cannot achieve their goal of cutting $2 trillion federal spending over the next decade without cutting Medicaid.
