We’ve reached the point in the midterm election campaign where Democrats insist that Republicans are itching to destroy Social Security. The usual gambit is to take stray comments from one or two Republicans and pretend that they represent a secret and sinister plan.
In October 2018, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell observed that “there’s a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes.” His Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, said he had “showed who the Republican Party really is.” Schumer even got some reporters to buy the spin that McConnell had said “ the GOP will push to cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security” if it retained control of the Senate.
In the elections a few weeks later, Republicans expanded their control of the Senate. They did not move to cut any of those programs.
