Why Don’t Americans Trust Republicans with Entitlements?

The Republican Party is currently in the middle of a long-standing disaster regarding entitlement spending. President Joe Biden has been hammering the party for months on their professed support for cutting Medicare and Social Security. Biden received accolades during his State of the Union address for attacking his opponents on these programs. The argument that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wants to raise the retirement age and turn Medicare into a voucher program will continue to be part of Biden’s stump speeches, likely for the rest of his presidency.

Republicans know that the issue of entitlement cuts is a non-starter. These programs are incredibly popular. Threats to change them helped lead to Mitt Romney’s presidential defeat in 2012 and George W. Bush’s cratering popularity in 2005. Donald Trump has crafted a strong attack against his main presidential rival, Ron DeSantis, on protecting entitlements. The idea is one of the most toxic that many Republicans hold. At the same time, they cannot help themselves from unleashing such attacks.

The problem that the Republican Party faces is the problem faced by any party trying to change their stance on an unpopular issue. Both Democrats and Republicans have experienced policy shifts in recent years. The differences between both experiences highlights the uphill climb Republicans will continue to have in the court of public opinion.

In order to make a true change in a party’s stance on an issue, the party must be committed to such a change at every level. There must be a concerted effort from think tanks to politicians on the local, state, and national levels. Leadership must speak with one voice and wayward actors must be marginalized or even punished. A large-scale effort has the chance of convincing the public that the shift is genuine and not done for short-term partisan gain.

The most obvious example of this shift is the move away from “defund the police” rhetoric among Democrats beginning in 2020. For years, Democrats had been clear about their desire for police reform. But beginning in 2020, the party embraced the idea of shifting police resources to other local government departments. This rhetoric became politically perilous following the rise in crime that year.

As a result, the party began to move away from rhetoric about defunding. The president and major party leaders embraced reform without defunding or abolishing the police. Critically, popular leftist Democrats in Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fell in line. Joe Biden and other party leaders hammered home the move away from defunding on an almost daily basis. In February 2022, NBC News reported, “President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are toughening their talk on crime, and refunding the police only two years after some progressive activists took up the call to defund them.” By the 2022 midterms, it was difficult for many pundits to even remember that Democrats had ever supported defunding the police. The move helped neutralize crime as a political cudgel and contributed to overperformance for Democrats in the midterm elections.

The recent move by Republicans on entitlements has been much less organized. Republicans have been critical of entitlement programs since they were first enacted in the 1930s. The party rallied behind several budgets throughout the 2010s that slashed Medicare and raised the retirement age for Social Security. Trump professed to support entitlements before and during his presidency, but the moment he left office the drumbeat against government programs began anew.

Many Republicans have tried to present a message of unified support for Medicare and Social Security. But they have been constantly undermined by other Republicans, most notably Rick Scott and Nikki Haley. A number of Republicans have stressed the importance of reducing entitlements or criticized those entitlements on a philosophical level. The Republican plan to protect or strengthen these programs does not exist. Even the rhetoric of spending supporters makes no logical sense. If a politician is on the record claiming that all government spending promotes laziness and ought to be replaced with charity and private programs, why are Medicare and Social Security exempt?

Republicans have not made the hard choices required to communicate to the public that they will not cut Social Security and Medicare. They have not reined in recalcitrant members or enforced message discipline. The party has not crafted a coherent narrative where entitlements fit into their vision of America’s future. As a result, they will not be able to stop both President Biden and former president Trump from being able to score political points on the issue.