2 weeks Ago By Antònia Crespí Ferrer
Former US President Joe Biden has reappeared less than 100 days after leaving office to make way for his successor (and predecessor), Donald Trump. Twelve weeks in which the Republican president has relentlessly pursued his ultra-right agenda and continued to attack the Democrat's legacy. On Monday, Trump once again blamed Biden for the war in Ukraine in a post on Truth Social.
Biden has returned to the political arena to defend Social Security, a program that has already suffered from the Elon Musk-led cuts with the resulting consequences: website crashes, technical errors, and unanswered phone lines, among other problems. "Now, in less than 100 days, this new administration has already done so much: so much damage and so much destruction. It could be that soon, they will attack the Social Security Administration," Biden said during an event in Chicago organized by the National Conference of Lawyers, Counselors and Advisors.
In the United States, Social Security provides financial support to individuals and families in areas ranging from retirement benefits, disability benefits, and school aid, in addition to enrolling people in Medicare. It's a program that covers 73 million citizens and which Trump has accused without evidence of being a waste and fraud cessation. At the end of March, the president signed an executive order suspending Social Security payments via physical checks.
"In 90 years, since Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, people have always received Social Security checks. They've received them during war, during times of crisis, during the pandemic. It didn't matter what.
But now, for the first time in history, this could change," the former president warned, referring to the decision to end the payments for the half-million citizens who will be affected by the measure. Shortly before Biden spoke in Chicago, Trump had also signed another executive order to "prevent illegal aliens and other ineligible individuals from obtaining" Social Security benefits. The reality is that most undocumented individuals are ineligible for the program's benefits.
One of the few exceptions is children, who should be guaranteed free education from preschool through high school regardless of their immigration status, according to a landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision. "Social Security is much more than a government program. It's the promise of Social Security paying your whole life," the 82-year-old former president argued, with much more force than at some points during the election campaign.
Biden once again attacked the billionaires within the new administration—"By the way, the Secretary of Commerce is a billionaire"—and focused on Social Security at a time when Republicans are proposing a comprehensive overhaul of the program. "Why are these people going against Social Security now? Well, they're following this old premise of the technological. The phrase is: ", Biden has explained, who assures that they want to reduce the size of Social Security to materialize the large tax cut that Trump promised during the campaign and renew the tax cuts from his first term.
"They want to make permanent the 2017 tax cut, which excessively benefits the wealthiest citizens and large corporations. This will cost 5 trillion dollars. Where will they get it from? [.
..] What are the two big pots of money in pure numbers? Social Security and Medicaid," Biden assured.
The large tax cut that the Republican Party is working on in Congress threatens many federal programs, which could end up being cut in order to keep the administration's spending low. Among them would be Representative John, Social Security will count this week. successfully process the budget framework from which to make the large tax cuts that Trump is trumpeting.
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