Biden slams Donald Trump for comments on social security and medicare

President Biden highlighted what is expected to be a major campaign issue for the next eight months on Monday, capitalising on remarks made by former President Trump that there are ways to go about "cutting" entitlements.

“Many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security and Medicare back on the chopping block again. If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them. Working people built this country,” Biden said while talking to his supporters in New Hampshire.

“Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table again,” Biden said. “The bottom line is, he’s still at it. I’m never gonna allow that to happen. I won’t cut Social Security. I won’t cut Medicare.”

The most of Monday was spent by the White House and Biden campaign capitalising on the remarks made by Donald Trump on CNBC's SquawkBox, where he was questioned about his future strategies for resolving long-term solvency problems with entitlement programmes like Social Security and Medicare.

First of all, Trump stated, "there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements and cutting." “And in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements — there’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”

Donald Trump's campaign swiftly moved to explain his comments as he gave no details about the steps he would take to change the programmes. According to a campaign spokesperson, the former president was particularly talking about reducing fraud and waste.

The former president insisted that Republicans should not make any changes to Social Security or Medicare, defying both GOP convention and some of his main opponents who contended that actions like raising the retirement age were necessary to guarantee the programmes' long-term viability.

However, during his time as president, Trump's White House included cuts to Medicare and Social Security in every budget proposal.

The upcoming fiscal year's budget proposal from Republicans includes provisions to increase Medicaid work requirements, lower yearly government spending, and target economic initiatives implemented during the last Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress.